[R-390] panel cleaning

[Dan Merz]

Hi,  you can buy sodium hydroxide at your local market as "Lye" .  The last
brand I bought was Red Devil,  used for drain cleaner.  But put an aluminum
panel in enough of this stuff and it may be gone overnight.  Sodium
hydroxide dissolves aluminum.  I used it to clean up aluminum shields/panel
for old radios. If you warm it up a bit,  it really goes to work.  It leaves
a frosted surface.  I also used it to make metal tags for radios using laser
printer transfers on aluminum as "resist".  It is very corrosive and
poisonous.  In the lab,  I used NaOH to dissolve large amounts of aluminum
from uranium shaped charge cones.  It only attacks certain metals
aggressively and uranium isn't one of them,  Dan. 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-390-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:r-390-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Dave or Debbie Metz
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 7:27 PM
To: r-390 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [R-390] panel cleaning

Just a wonder here. A long time ago, I used a dunk tank of sodium hydroxide
to soak fenders from a car. Put it in  a tank for a couple of days and wash
off the paint.  Can you still buy sodium hydroxide as a dry pellets? My
guess is that it has gone the way of carbon tetrachloride. Too dangerous for
idiots. As a strong base solution, it didn't etch the bottom metal but sure
got rid of the paint. Thanks 73's dave


_____________________________________________________________
R-390 mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/r-390
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/faq.htm
Post: mailto:R-390 at mailman.qth.net
Unsubscribe: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/options/r-390