Today I got my bag of bolts, washers, and nuts from Aircraft Spruce. Wanting to make sure I had all the correct lengths and all, I headed over to the shop to try them out. As you might guess — especially if you know me — all of the brackets were at home, so no joy there.
I did order a 14 TPI bi-metal bandsaw blade, it should arrive tomorrow. The 24 TPI metal blade is just way too fine for cutting this tubing. Stew says the 10 TPI wood blade I have would do fine — but I want something I can use on the 2024 stock without worry.
Once back at home, I treated all of the brackets with Alumiprep (now known as “Bonderite C-IC33 Aero”). It’s a phosphoric acid etching cleaner, does a bang-up job of cleaning up and etching aluminum parts prior to conversion coating or painting. Well, as it turns out, my Alodine is no good any more. No surprise, really. I left a set of brackets in the bath for an hour and could barely see a tinge of tan or gold color, not enough. Too bad, I was really hoping to use that. I’ll need to pick up some good self-etching primer instead, I’m not spending close to $100 for a quart of Alodine that I’ll then have to dispose of later on.