PeopleAreIdiots

Just removed the blue anodized coating on my Hope bar ends last night and I figured I might share what I learned for others who want to try the same thing. Heres what I did:

Blue bar ends that no longer match the color scheme of my build


Place anodized parts in a plastic container. Acquire oven cleaner.


Cover parts completely with oven cleaner. Wait a significant length of time which is probably dependent on the thickness of your coating and the strength of your oven cleaner. Took about 2 hours for me.


Remove parts from oven cleaner and rinse well. They may appear blackish but not to fear. Wash first with brillo pad and some dish soap. If that doesn't take the tarnish off right away, try making a paste out of water and cream of tartar and scrubbing with that. Vinegar or something else that's acidic may also work. This is the result, raw aluminum to match my other silver components.

Bigpond

PeopleAreIdiots

eh, I figured it was better than letting them sit in my parts box and having to buy a totally new pair.

Bigpond

Nikola88

Hi, what is the active ingredient in this oven cleaner? Some sort of acid or base?

Gresp15C

Primarily sodium hydroxide, aka Lye.

I'm not a chemist, and can't recommend what's safe to use, but Lye is a strong base with the ability to dissolve aluminum.

Lye, or anything with lye, is extremely dangerous if it comes in contact with your eyes.

PeopleAreIdiots

Yes the active ingredient is sodium hydroxide (aka caustic soda or lye). Like Gresp15c said, NaOH dissolves/etches aluminum so you end up with a matte finish like the one you see in my bar ends. For a shiny finish you can either sand and polish after stripping the coating. You can also use another more involved process that involves an acidic solution if polishing would be too difficult.

In case anyone is curious, the finish on my bar ends has held up perfectly so far with no signs of darkening or tarnish.

I_am_X

Thanks for sharing, might be useful one day.

/Björn

base2 

Often times, especially for larger parts, oven cleaner is inconsistant & too strong. The result is burned parts.

Any online soap making store has food grade lye. With that you can control it's strength easily. 6oz per gallon of water is a pretty average ratio. (or 3oz per half gallon, 1.5oz per quart, etc...)

Usually it takes 1 to 6 minutes, then a scrub with a dish soap and the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge.

These took real effort & time with metal polish though.

PeopleAreIdiots

Very good input! Yeah mixing your own lye solution would certainly be more controllable. Not to mention the fact that you'd be working with a simple liquid bath instead of that weird foam.

Cant argue with those results. Nice!

IAmSam

I have a question along these same lines so might as well just revive this thread and ask here...

What does the group think about using these methods on Rims?

TIA...

bwilli88 

As long as the rims are aluminum and you just put the lye on the rims. Not sure but it could react funky to chrome nipples or old spokes

PeopleAreIdiots

You'd probably end up having to do a lot of sanding/polishing but I don't see why not. I don't think it should effect the durability of the rims or anything.

IAmSam

I'm pretty close to being convinced to give this a try...

PeopleAreIdiots

Do it. I wanna see how it turns out!