Hi All! I've been sitting on doing some home anodizing, and I haven't really seen any guides here on how to accomplish this. I decided I would take some pictures as I started working through the process in the hopes that someone can either get some use out of instructions or avoid my fuck ups while I go through with this. That being said, this is my first kind of instructional guide for anything, and also my first shot at anodizing, so don't take anything i write as gospel.
There's a ton of guides on what to buy and where to buy it, so I won't go into too much detail beyond listing out the stuff I bought. All that being said, here goes nothing:
Step 1: Disassembly and De-Ano
Everything starts with the prep work. Today's sacrificial lamb is a CCI Phantom I bought on ebay. It looked like this:
I'll be working the right feed body, the trigger frame, the VASA, the handle mounted ASA, and the barrel - Also, I'll be using the normal back end, instead of the gauged one since i couldn't remove the gauge. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I don't want to break the gauge as I'll probably just end up using it on another phantom in the future.
First big step is disassembly. I tore the whole thing down, including pulling the trigger out of the frame by removing the two pins holding it in. I followed this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBY8hHGKkSQ to figure that bit out. No idea how the hell I'm gonna swing reattaching it at the moment since I don't have the pick he does, but that's a later me problem.
After disassembly, I was left with these bits to not get anodized:
And the trigger, which I am just now realizing wasn't in this picture. Can you tell I hadn't actually decided to write this up yet?
Anyway, once you've got all the to-be-anodized bits take apart, next comes stripping the existing ano. This can be done multiple ways
If you have a sonic cleaner, I've learned it does fuck all to speed the process up. Use a bucket.
Once you let em sit long enough, you get parts that look more or less like this - you may need to hit them with a sponge or brush to get some of the gunk off.
You'll notice they aren't completely cleaned off - that's fine, because I'm going to have to sand anyway.
This leads me nicely into
Part 2: More Prep
Once I'd more or less stripped all of the parts I wanted to anodize, it was time to sand. I did this with 120 grit, 220 grit, 400 grid, and 1000 grit. I would have preferred to have 600/800 in there somewhere, but home depot did me dirty. After sanding, I "polished" the aluminum with some metal polish and my drill. I didn't have a polishing attachment, and neither did home depot, but I did have a car wax pad. It almost, kinda worked.
Here's where the parts were at after that process. Definitely cleaner than before, definitely not a mirror finish:
That whole process took about 2 hours. I also have no clue what the black metal bit is - i couldn't strip it down.
Part 3: Anodizing
After this comes the anodizing setup. I used a power supply and lead plate purchased on amazon, a home depot bucket, and a fish tank heater for this. The anodizing liquid is a 50/50 mix of battery acid from home depot and distilled water. This incredibly janky setup looks like this:
I stretched a wire across to hold the charge and parts. Then i hooked up the power supply to it. Once I was ready to go, I stuck parts in and waited. I did about 20 minutes per part.
Gotta say, not thrilled with the fish tank bubbler as an agitator. I probably would have stuck it to the bottom of the bucket before filling it with acid if i'd known it would float so damn much.
Anyway, once I'd done up all the parts it was time for
Part 4: Dye
This is definitely the bit I was most excited for. I wanted a purple main color, with silver splatter throughout. To accomplish this, i first covered the parts in nail polish.
Then, into the dye it went. I was heating the dye with a propane burner i had on hand, but something with automatic temp control would have been nice.
After dunking things until i had the color I wanted, I cleaned off the nail polish with some non-acetone remover. Here's the result:
Some of the parts are substantially lighter than others - additional time in the dye didn't fix this. Google leads me to believe this was either too much anodizing, too little anodizing, too little sanding/deanodizing, or bad luck. Still looks neat though!
After this it was into a boiling bath of nickel acetate and distilled water, in the same setup as above.
Part 5: Results
And the results are in!
For something I did in my backyard with a home depot bucket? Not bad. Custom pump handle color matches, custom pump plate...does not, but that's because I told oDm the wrong color! Turns out purple dye and violet dye are not the same, and I could have figured that out because of the way that they are.
In all seriousness, there's a couple of issues here, and I'm not sure if it was a me thing or an existing issue-
1. The barrel threading is TIGHT. It wasn't exactly easy to thread before, but now it is extremely tight. I think this is a mix of the process + the size of the deadlywind back, but I didn't have the DW to test with before I did the ano process so it could also have been a me issue. It works though, mostly.
2. The shooting is garbage right now. Half of me thinks I lost a spring, because I just cannot bring this thing over 220 on HPA. I know the springs are technically for Co2, but I didn't think it would make thaaaat much of a difference. Either way, I've ordered a spring kit from CCI so we'll see if that fixes it.
Other than that, what you see is what you get! The only thing it's missing, in my opinion, is a CCM 86 or a CCI 45. The poly handle looks fine but something matchy would be fine-er.
Next up is buying one of those stock class to empire feedneck adapters and getting a vert feed body. I really hate this RF.
That's it though, I hope this helps someone!
There's a ton of guides on what to buy and where to buy it, so I won't go into too much detail beyond listing out the stuff I bought. All that being said, here goes nothing:
Step 1: Disassembly and De-Ano
Everything starts with the prep work. Today's sacrificial lamb is a CCI Phantom I bought on ebay. It looked like this:
I'll be working the right feed body, the trigger frame, the VASA, the handle mounted ASA, and the barrel - Also, I'll be using the normal back end, instead of the gauged one since i couldn't remove the gauge. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I don't want to break the gauge as I'll probably just end up using it on another phantom in the future.
First big step is disassembly. I tore the whole thing down, including pulling the trigger out of the frame by removing the two pins holding it in. I followed this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBY8hHGKkSQ to figure that bit out. No idea how the hell I'm gonna swing reattaching it at the moment since I don't have the pick he does, but that's a later me problem.
After disassembly, I was left with these bits to not get anodized:
And the trigger, which I am just now realizing wasn't in this picture. Can you tell I hadn't actually decided to write this up yet?
Anyway, once you've got all the to-be-anodized bits take apart, next comes stripping the existing ano. This can be done multiple ways
- Lye - pure lye can actually be bought on amazon, as a drain cleaner. It's also real bad for you and kinda hard to mess with, but it'll strip the ano real good. I did not go this route
- Sandpaper - good ol elbow grease. I also did not do this, but I wonder if it would have saved me time when I have to sand polish everything tomorrow.
- Degreaser - I used Greased Lightning since i had some laying around, but I hear simple green works just as well.
If you have a sonic cleaner, I've learned it does fuck all to speed the process up. Use a bucket.
Once you let em sit long enough, you get parts that look more or less like this - you may need to hit them with a sponge or brush to get some of the gunk off.
You'll notice they aren't completely cleaned off - that's fine, because I'm going to have to sand anyway.
This leads me nicely into
Part 2: More Prep
Once I'd more or less stripped all of the parts I wanted to anodize, it was time to sand. I did this with 120 grit, 220 grit, 400 grid, and 1000 grit. I would have preferred to have 600/800 in there somewhere, but home depot did me dirty. After sanding, I "polished" the aluminum with some metal polish and my drill. I didn't have a polishing attachment, and neither did home depot, but I did have a car wax pad. It almost, kinda worked.
Here's where the parts were at after that process. Definitely cleaner than before, definitely not a mirror finish:
That whole process took about 2 hours. I also have no clue what the black metal bit is - i couldn't strip it down.
Part 3: Anodizing
After this comes the anodizing setup. I used a power supply and lead plate purchased on amazon, a home depot bucket, and a fish tank heater for this. The anodizing liquid is a 50/50 mix of battery acid from home depot and distilled water. This incredibly janky setup looks like this:
I stretched a wire across to hold the charge and parts. Then i hooked up the power supply to it. Once I was ready to go, I stuck parts in and waited. I did about 20 minutes per part.
Gotta say, not thrilled with the fish tank bubbler as an agitator. I probably would have stuck it to the bottom of the bucket before filling it with acid if i'd known it would float so damn much.
Anyway, once I'd done up all the parts it was time for
Part 4: Dye
This is definitely the bit I was most excited for. I wanted a purple main color, with silver splatter throughout. To accomplish this, i first covered the parts in nail polish.
Then, into the dye it went. I was heating the dye with a propane burner i had on hand, but something with automatic temp control would have been nice.
After dunking things until i had the color I wanted, I cleaned off the nail polish with some non-acetone remover. Here's the result:
Some of the parts are substantially lighter than others - additional time in the dye didn't fix this. Google leads me to believe this was either too much anodizing, too little anodizing, too little sanding/deanodizing, or bad luck. Still looks neat though!
After this it was into a boiling bath of nickel acetate and distilled water, in the same setup as above.
Part 5: Results
And the results are in!
For something I did in my backyard with a home depot bucket? Not bad. Custom pump handle color matches, custom pump plate...does not, but that's because I told oDm the wrong color! Turns out purple dye and violet dye are not the same, and I could have figured that out because of the way that they are.
In all seriousness, there's a couple of issues here, and I'm not sure if it was a me thing or an existing issue-
1. The barrel threading is TIGHT. It wasn't exactly easy to thread before, but now it is extremely tight. I think this is a mix of the process + the size of the deadlywind back, but I didn't have the DW to test with before I did the ano process so it could also have been a me issue. It works though, mostly.
2. The shooting is garbage right now. Half of me thinks I lost a spring, because I just cannot bring this thing over 220 on HPA. I know the springs are technically for Co2, but I didn't think it would make thaaaat much of a difference. Either way, I've ordered a spring kit from CCI so we'll see if that fixes it.
Other than that, what you see is what you get! The only thing it's missing, in my opinion, is a CCM 86 or a CCI 45. The poly handle looks fine but something matchy would be fine-er.
Next up is buying one of those stock class to empire feedneck adapters and getting a vert feed body. I really hate this RF.
That's it though, I hope this helps someone!
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