I finally got around to alodining the tank skin for the right tank, using my bag-in-a-box setup. It worked, but not very well. I won't be using that method again, I think just about ANY other method would be preferable. The first problem I ran into was that my table was not level (knew that, forgot it) so my alodine mix pooled on the right side. This wasn't really that much of a problem as I was able to continuously swish the liquid around and keep everything covered - but the sharp corners (relatively speaking, they've been deburred) cut into the two layers of 2-mil plastic that I used for the bag, and I promptly developed leaks of chromic acid on my work bench. Not good. By the time I had gotton the full skin alodined, I had lost perhaps a pint of my acid solution.

I quickly rinsed the skin, whereupon I ran into my second problem, which is that I used city water for the rinse and the minerals (my water here is quite hard) reacted with the chromic acid and left streaky markings on the alodined surface. All the surface has been adequately covered, it's just not a nice clean uniform color any longer. Once it's painted, nobody will ever know - but I'll know. While hurriedly rinsing the skin, I couldn't take the time to thoroughly examine what the result was because I was busy trying to take care of my third issue - which was that my planned method of taking one corner of the plastic on my work bench and lowering it into a funnel for drainage back into my bottle was working about as well as trying to put on tights in a phone booth. Superman might can do it, but apparently I can't. I saved some, spilled some, and in the resulting clean up managed to drop a roll of paper towels into my "bag" area with quite a bit of acid still in it, and the paper towel roll dutifully sucked up my expensive chromic acid QUITE well, thank you....

By the time it was over I had only saved a small portion of my chromic acid, so I ordered more, finished the cleanup (went through 4 pairs of gloves), drank a couple beers and went to bed. Not my finest hour. I don't know yet how I'm going to do the other skin, but it won't be this way.