carving the centri

[peezie]

Couple months ago I posted about carving up my Centri and Halo. Some things came up and I never had time until now. Carving/Engraving is somewhat like tattooing in that there are no mistakes and if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
So, first order of business is stripping the Centri of its anodizing. Mike, the inventor of the Centri said that this anodizing was a harder anodizing and would be a little more difficult to remove. Looking at it, im guessing a type 2 anodizing. Some people here suggested easy off oven cleaner or lye which is what pro anodizing shops use. Well, I found out(from online forum so may not be correct) that easy off contains about 5% sodium hydroxide which is in fact lye. I dont know if that is a high enough percentage to strip type 2 anodizing. I found out that drain cleaners contain over 90% sodium hydroxide(the percentages i got from online and may not be correct). I had some drano laying around the house so decided to test it.
centri02.jpgcentri03.jpgcentri04.jpgcentri05.jpgcentri06.jpg
This is the stuff I used to do this. Wire was so I can handle the parts. Drano/Lye/Sodium Hydroxide is nasty stuff and you dont want to get it on your skin.
Just got a container of water and put some drano in. Wasnt precise or anything. Shook the parts around a little and the water started turning black. Took about 5 minutes for the parts to turn into a smoky color.