An experience that occurs many times in the metal finishing industry is one that can simply be called ″bad″ metal. Instances of bad metal are relatively rare, but instances of blaming poor processing results on bad metal are more frequent. So, it is important to identify bad metal and to identify bad processing. The author shows how to do this and, more importantly, how to find the cause of the trouble and make a permanent correction. The production of satisfactory coatings must consider the specification of the basis metal, the condition of that metal, and the coating process.