Removing aluminum from mill flutes. NaOH works!

I posted on this about a month? ago. I had a nice 4-flute endmill that was rendered useless when I tried to use it to mill out a piece of extruded aluminum. Flutes filled up and nail/icepick to hammer it out didn't work. Someone suggested lye, so I soaked it in purple Zep cleaner and then forgot about it :-)

Found it yesterday on the corner of the workbench. The Zep had all evaporated leaving a sticky mess on the end of the mill, but after washing it off, voila! Al had been dissolved. My Niagara mill is aluminum free.

Add one more trick to my shop knowledge!

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