18650 laptop mystery

Ok. So I’m a bit of a noob with 18650s. But I did my first laptop pull and ended up with 6 Samsung icr 28a cells.

So I checked with dmm and they all read 1.0v +/- .05v. And I was sad. So I did as much reading as I could and decided to risk charging. So I put them outside in a 5 gallon stock pot and my nitecore d2 charger. So to my surprise. They read 1v for a minute then rose to 3.2v over the course of 2 more min. Double checked with dmm and confirmed 3.2v. Now they are charging at a normal pace for 18650s. No heat yet.

So… Is this normal? Am I making grenades?

My goal is to charge to 3.8 and let them rest a week to see if they self discharge. Any sign of trouble and they are getting recycled.

I’ve never read about batteries going from 1 to 3 volts like that. So any info or threads would be appreciated. I can’t seem to find any postings with a similar story.

It looks like gauess163 is on the case. I know that a similar question was posed earlier in the week. for my part I have had two new 18650pf get drained to below 1v and they came back very very well. Do I think it cost a few cycles? absolutely. Do I think every lion that goes to 1v is a hand grenade for the next power cycle absolutely not.

The 64.k question is when exactly do they go “BAD”? and it is worth finding out?

I will go out on a limb and say you will probably find they are still usable. Would I use them in my “high drain” today’s definition of that is … (equipment that draws more then 2C), no, but can they be used for more mundane tasks where they can run out their life in easy load cycles, ya probably!