Caustic soda experts help needed!

[JeRkY]

My seatpost & caustic soda experiemnt failed at any concentration I could make that still poured. Its worth a go but it isnt a magic fix.

Errr... it was an aluminium seatpost, wasn't it...?

No it was ti... :roll:

It is (was) Aluminium and it was left standing for a day at a time with fresh mix's at varying concentrations added at the end of each day. And yes there was an exothermic reaction, and yes it was slowly eating away the post.

The problem was the seal between the post and the seat tube was so tight that the any concentration strong enough to have an effect was too thick to capillery up between the post and the tube.

Therefore the only way to see any success would have been to dissolve the post from the inside out, which meant munching through 2-4 mm wall section of alu tube...essentially it wasnt worth the time required.

Also tried the blow lamp on outer/freezer spray on inner approach too, had a nice volcanic reaction at one point when I did this and forgot to drain the sollution. (wear a mask!)

After all this I gave the problem (93 Orange clockwork) on free of charge to a fellow RB member I hope they had better luck than I did.

 

[Andy R]

Does costic soda eat wax then ? if so i stand corrected.

It probably does - it cleans all sorts of fatty deposits out of drains so I wouldn't rely on wax being resistant either.

 

[Farmfield]

Caustic soda is also used for paint stripper and will definitely attack some glues.

Caustic Soda also attacks aluminimum, and quickly!

Does it? I thought it reacted with the aluminium oxide, not the aluminium itself... I might be totally wrong though...

I also heard that aluminium exposed for longer periods than normal cleaning (+20-30 minutes?) will create some pretty cool patterns...

I really gotta test this, hehe... One note though... Alu + caustics = hydrogen, so not a good idea doing this will smoking, hehe... K a h a b o o m ... (or at least a sharp popp)