Larry Gagnon wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 00:30:33 +0000, RadioGuy wrote:

Howdy:

Its been a common practice with me to finish the aluminum surface of a
chassis or box with an immersion into a caustic solution followed with a
coating of clear acrylic spray---I like the satin finish it produces. I
normally use lye that I regularly found on the shelves of our neighborhood
hardware stores. However, I've been having a harder time of finding the
flaked lye that I have used over the years for that purpose. I have used
'Lewis Red Devil Lye' that I found at Ace Hardware.
[snip]

Am I correct in understanding that TSP, also called Sugar Soap (the stuff
used by many to wash walls before painting) is essentially mostly lye? If
so that is quite a cheap source you might want to consider.

TSP is Tri-Sodium Phosphate; lye is Sodium Hydroxide. They're different
compounds with different properties.

Sodium Hydroxide is incredibly nasty if mishandled: the human body does not
handle strong bases well, and Sodium Hydroxide eats flesh with terrible
avidity. It's really, really easy to lose meat or an eye to a drop or three
in the wrong place. I wear long gloves, a plastic apron, a long-sleeved
shirt, goggles _and_ a face shield whenever I have to work with it.

TSP, while much less nasty, is still nothing to play with. Google for the
Material Safety Datasheets (MSDS) on both.

--
Before long, Microsoft will attempt to patent the alphabet (hoping we'll
have to pay royalties to use our keyboards and keep their stock solid).
-- Phil Paxton

Am I correct in understanding that TSP, also called Sugar Soap....
Nope. TSP is Tri-sodium phosphate...

So what is in Draino?
--
--Myron A. Calhoun.
Five boxes preserve our freedoms: soap, ballot, witness, jury, and cartridge
PhD EE (retired). "Barbershop" tenor. CDL(PTXS). W0PBV. (785) 539-4448
NRA Life Member and Certified Instructor (Home Firearm Safety, Rifle, Pistol)

Am I correct in understanding that TSP, also called Sugar Soap....
Nope. TSP is Tri-sodium phosphate...

So what is in Draino?

The Draino brand drain-unclogger I have seen is a mixture of lye
pellets, and granulated aluminum. When dumped into a drain and
watered, the lye and aluminum react, generating hydrogen gas, quite a
bit of heat, and often some steam. The heat helps break up the gunk
clogging the drain.

"Red Devil" brand drain-unclogger is just lye, without the aluminum.
If I recall correctly it even comes with instructions for making lye
soap, using lye and fat.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

-ex- wrote in message
...
Wes Stewart wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 16:40:27 GMT, "RadioGuy"


On simple projects I print or photocopy text then affix them onto to the
aluminum surface (after a first coat of acrylic on the aluminum) with
white
glue then with multiple sprays of acrylic affix them permanently to the
surface. It worked real nice with a bandpass filter project---I secured
the
graph of the filter characteristics onto the minibox for reference.


Nice idea. I use the ruboff lettering (Datak) but of course they
don't have any BPF response curves, [g]



On a bare metal panel the homebrew inkjet waterslide decals work quite
well and you could do your response curve with that method.

-Bill

It took me awhile to figure out what waterslide decals were---then I
remembered! The last time I used them was many decades ago on model
airplanes.

What a great idea... the possiblities are endless. A Google search for
'waterslide decals' came up with many hits.

http://www.inkjetdecalpaper.com/inkjet.html
http://www.papilio.com/top%20pages/i...lide-decal.htm

Thanks

RG