Please tell us WHO you are, WHAT you do, & WHY you want to know!

Please remember that you're asking people to volunteer their time to help you! They'll more likely try to help a real person work through their problems than to compete against AI agents on generalities  🙂

Abstract Questions are easily misunderstood and usually stultifying. Some readers skip them because nothing can be learned from them. So, pretty please, with sugar on it—

• Spend time on your question. Tell us whether you're a 3rd grader or post-doc, a hobbyist or a pro, working on a watch dial or a Winnebago, doing one for yourself or millions in a factory, a new process not yet successful or something you've done for years that went south. If helpers can't start except with long lists of "ifs-ands-&-buts", few will.
• Not "What will happen if?", but what are you actually experiencing?
• Tell us something we don't know! Say "my formula of so & so gives such-&-such a problem", not "I want the best formula".
• Interesting questions get answered! Say "I have a brass trunk from an ancestor's 1890's sea voyage …", not "How do I clean brass?". Say "I need the lugs nuts from my '55 Belair show car chrome plated", not "What shop does chrome?".
• Include a photo/sketch of the situation if you can.
• A pic of yourself encourages responses by personalizing things.
• Hurried postings which must be set aside for editing may get buried under new mail.

Ever since its founding in 1989, the primary aim of this forum has been to be a gathering place of camaraderie & warm aloha for anyone wishing to share their interest in metal finishing. Anonymity is incompatible with this. Apologies, but we focus on people first, so postings with fictitious names or just nicknames sometimes get buried or discarded. Some readers feel the same way and won't engage with people who prefer to remain strangers.

If your company doesn't allow public posting, or you'd rather not identify yourself, please feel free to anonymously read everything here: the site requires no registration, usernames, or passwords and Incognito Mode is fine.

But please retain a consultant if you need confidential help -- don't poison the precious well of civil discourse with fiction -- especially on behalf of a corporation unwilling to pay for confidential help and asking others to share while not willing to share themselves  🙂