On Monday, the timber arrived to allow me to construct the dunking bath for washing and alodining parts. I constructed a tank aprox 12 fl long and 14 inches wide. A centre separator 4x2 can be inserted or removed makng a single trough 12 inches wide or two troughs half width. There is a hole bored in the base for each trough for draining. It is lined with disposable sheet plastic, to make cleanup easy. (Drain, roll and throw). I lined it initially with 100um plastic sheet, but developed a leak the first time I used it, so will be using 200um sheet in future. The leak was my fault as I had used the tank one and didnt seal it properly the second time. I seal it with some large Test tube stoppers (1 inch).
My process is:
- Stewart Systems EKO Clean E670 for initial clean off of hand grease, oil residue from the compressor driven tools and Beolube residue. - Stewart Systems EKO Etch E675 which is a further degreaser and an etch - Alodine 1201 - Stewart Systems EKO Prime - Green.
On this occasion, I did up to alodining. The first piece I did was the VS spar. You can see from the photo, that is way over cooked. I left it in for 3 minutes per the instructions but frankly, 1 minute would have been fine. The other pieces were much better.
Tips: I left my the VS parts in for 3 minutes. Way too long. They came out very brown. There is no doubt These will never corode. I am not worried about the colur sa they will be primed over the top.
Priming Tank 4x2 + Ply from the Delivery Box
Baffles in place to reduce size to size required for VS Spar only
