FortNine Shows You How To Anodize for Fun and Profit

Canadian motorcycle YouTubers find a way to be funny and informative.

Who doesn’t love anodized stuff? With a little ingenuity, you can anodize your own parts at home.FortNine

FortNine is basically a Canadian version of RevZilla, an online retailer focused on motorcycle bits and bobs. FortNine has done us enormous favors with its latest how-to video. The first favor is teaching everyone how to anodize parts at home. The second favor is doing it in the vintage style of Jam Handy educational vids or the Turbo Encabulator. The third favor is the emphasis the video places on how to avoid dying during the prep phase. No, really.

The chemicals involved are awful. Make sure you wear plenty of personal protective equipment before trying this at home.FortNine

This is important because the ingredients list reads like someone’s trying to start a trap house or get put on a federal watchlist. Lots of distilled water, plenty of buckets, a thermometer, battery acid, drain cleaner, Brakleen, coloring dye, aluminum wire, aluminum plate, a stove, PVC pipe, metal clips, and a 12-volt battery. The protagonist, a lovely chap called Mechanic No. 43, asks the narrator, “Isn’t that kinda toxic and dangerous?” The narrator replies, “Maybe.”

Get the steps right, and your anodized parts will look factory.FortNine

That maybe is really a “Yes, unless you follow my directions exactly.” This comes into play when Mechanic No. 43 doesn’t follow directions, leading to a sequence set to 1980s synthwave music and involving a machine called the Proletariator 9000.

Just watch the vid. It’s short, fun, informative, and the results are awesome. If you’ve got some worn-out machined aluminum parts on your rig that make you sad, do like the narrator says: “Dry your eyes, let’s anodize.”

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