Painting aluminum

[Brian Wood]

I use a different technique which could work for you if you live in a large
enough metro area. I made friends with the owner of a local sheet metal shop
that has "Brite-Dip" tanks to etch and anodize aluminum. After sanding the
aluminum (which they can do much nicer than I can with one pass through a
sanding machine), they run it through the chemical tanks to do a caustic
etch (which you are simulating with Lye), followed by a cleaning process and
finally alodine coat. If you're nice, they may just do it for free; it
doesn't take long (I used to hand dip my homebrew chassis in the tanks at HP
back when we actually manufactured stuff). The shop I use can also do
silk-screening, so you can take them a photographic master and they'll silk
screen it too (but
they will charge you for that - it's time consuming and uses resources).
Inbetween the etching and silk-screening, I take the piece home and
spray-paint it. I found that a Hammerite finish looks real good -- better
than the old wrinkle finish. If you're interested in the results, e-mail me
and I'll send you a small jpeg of my restored 1966 6146B transmitter. Tried
to post it here, but the jpeg was too big for the list.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Heathkit Owners and Collectors List
[mailto:HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV]On Behalf Of Fred Holnagel
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:47 PM
To: HEATH at LISTSERV.TEMPE.GOV
Subject: Painting aluminum


The idea of using lye is a good one, however don't make too strong a
solution!  I tried some on a small part one time and forgot it was in the
little plastic pail.  About two hours later I went to check and the part
was gone!  Like the previous writer says, it will turn black and when
it's fairly uniform rinse it in cold water quick! Fred W7PRV

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