Ok, good tip. In the Caswell manual they say consider the entire shank as a tube but obviously your method is more precise. Maybe I'll incorporate consideration for the threaded region eventually. That's a big difference.
Hoping desperately to find some Ammonium Hydroxide locally tomorrow. I've got a bike that's been down for over a month and it's begining to burn me to get it back together
I was hoping that the 6.6 pH of the reverse osmosis water I used to top off the solution would bring the pH back up but it would take a LOT.
Which brings up another question....how many times can you "Top-Off" the solution with distilled water until the solution is too weak to plate? How do you know when you need to change out the solution / bath entirely?