diy nickel plating?

Hi All,

I'm currently doing up an old motorbike and many of the nuts, bolt heads and fasteners are quite rusty. They have all cleaned up ok, back to clean bare metal but obviously won't stay like that for long. Unfortunately many of them are also 'special' (shouldered or large like wheel spindles) so would probably be quite expensive to replace.

So, on the grounds that we have several bikes and no doubt could make good use of any plating system that worked, can anyone recommend a particular kit for this or offer any other general advice please.

I'm just looking to brighten these things up a bit and hopefully keep the rust at bay.

Al the best ..

T i m

p.s. Google seems to be quite keen to take me here ..

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Reply to
T i m
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years all the kits contain the same thing, I buy the nickel salts and anode from an autojumble much much cheaper then a kit and use Vim then sulphuric acid as a degreaser.

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Reply to
Mark

Hmm, that sounds interesting ..

How good is the finished result may I ask Mark? Is it spanner / rust proof would you say?

How long would it realistically take to put a decent coating on say a front wheel axle and nut?

Do you buy both anodes or could you use scrap (for the copper anode at least)?

What sort of PSU do you use?

All the best ..

T i m

Reply to
T i m

Frost seem to do many plating kits and books, etc. They're very expensive, but might give you some ideas as to what's available. Just about everything they sell can be bought elsewhere for half price or less.

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Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Good kits, not cheap, but simple and reliable. Their manual is good too, as is the little Poyner book (Workshop Practice series)

An old Canning handbook (commercial supplier) is a very good guide to techniques, as is the cyanide-flavoured '50s precursor to Poyner (try eBay)

Electroless nickel is easy to get good results with, but expensive (in terms of coverage). If you're doing bulk, then get a nickel electroplating kit too.

For acid copper you can make up your own kit with a saturated solution of copper sulphate (farm shop), bit of sulphuric drain cleaner to tweak the pH, scrap copper sheet anode and a bench PSU. Doesn't work over steel though - flash coat it with nickel first.

A good bench PSU with an easily controllable current limit is well worth it, as is a heater with a real thermostat.

Preparation, degreasing and washing is a right old faff, but you have to get it right. Really you need to dedicate much of a garden shed or spare bathroom to your plating shop - it's _not_ a kitchen sink process. If you've got any sense, you'll use a fume cupboard too. You're also working with acid, water, electricity and electronics. If you don't kill yourself by electrocution first, acid fumes will still do a number on the innards of your expensive PSU!

Silver's pretty easy at home. Chrome isn't practical. For some decorative work, you can DIY silver plate more cheaply than chrome! (car fascias are OK, but it won't last outdoors on a bike).

Reply to
Andy Dingley

a production 'kit' only to find much of what you are getting are basic everyday items (like a plastic bucket or rubber gloves etc).

However, there can be those hidden not_so_obvious items that look everyday but aren't, made or a special material or of a certain grade etc.

I have plastic containers, gloves, wires, clips (electrical and other) a decent bench PSU (variable V and I), could probably find some copper [1] but not sure where I'd find nickel.

From reading about I think I'd go for bought chemistry (11 secret herbs and spices) ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

Reply to
T i m

Hi Andy. Yes, Google found Caswell when I was looking earlier. Have you used them yourself?

Now in my basket. ;-)

Well how much I go onto do will be a function of how well it all works. As it looks like we are talking around £100 to start, I might test the ground with a lad I knows Grandad who has his own plating business locally. You can never tell with such things though .. they might not do the sort of thing I need, can't do 'small items' or might be just too expensive (compared with the price of new bits).

Ah. And do you have a similar ingredients list to just do the nickel or would nickel over copper be more rustproof?

The bench PSU I have but I take it a fish tank heater isn't what you were thinking of?

Understood .. all in the prep ...

Noted. ;-)

Chrome seems to be difficult for the big boys now we are more bothered about killing the people that do it. BMW bikes suffered a lot with 'poor chrome' when the new rules came in.

Is the d-i-y nickel fairly rustproof when applied on it's own would you say Andy?

All the best and thanks ...

T i m

Reply to
T i m

Yes, the nickels. I'm thinking of trying their "Krome" next (a shinier nickel substitute for chrome)

Copper, silver, anodising aluminium or Ti I can roll my own. (Ti is easy - just use Pepsi as an electrolyte!)

Then there's electroforming

and electroetching

Electroless nickel is a good place to start. It's good for small stuff that's not worth sending out, and has sharp corners or holes that are difficult to do electrically.

I have a list of ingredients, but not the ingredients themselves. It's just too difficult to get the Ear of Bat these days, except in ton quantities. Even though one of the House Elves is a chemist, the stuff is too obscure to find easily in workable quantities.

That's the stuff. Nickel flash first, then copper for impermeability and something thick enough to polish smooth, then nickel for looks. You need the nickel flash first or else the acid copper process will pit the steel and blister afterwards.

It'll work, but you really need reliable automatic control so that you don't have to keep watching it. Some of the processes are also fussy about just what the temperature is.

There's an older edition of a similar book before Poyner, "Electro-Plating for the Amateur" by L. Warburton (Model & Allied Publications, ISBN 0853440565) which is fairly common on eBay and covers the cyanide processes. Much of this book is given over to the nuts & bolts of building high-current rectifiers from valves, which was just hard work in those days. These days electronics is cheap, so make use of it.

Nope - nickel is slightly permeable to water and will rust through. You have to do the 3 layer thing with copper. Two layers if it's commercial work and you're doing cyanide copper rather than acid.

If you're electroforming over something soft (baby shoes etc.) then repeated layers of nickel and copper stiffen it up nicely. Provided you have the space to set both baths up simultaneously, it's not hard.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Interesting. We have a silver-plated tea-set (teapot, milkjug etc) where the silver plate has been pretty much polished away.

I did make some enquires a couple of years ago back in the UK, and people seemed to want about 50 quid per item to re-plate them.

They're of no financial value - but do have sentimental value.

Do you think it'd be cost-effective to purchase the necessary kit and DIY the plating ? I've no experience of silver-plating, but understand basic chemistry

Thanks Adrian

Reply to
Adrian

Cheers

Good grief, I new that stuff was caustic but!

Interesting. So, could be used to grow a new car body where rust has eaten it away! ;-)

Memories of d-i-y PCB's

Ah, so electroplating *may* have issues with nut bolt corners then Andy?

Hehe

Ah. Hmm, as you said before .. this all sounds like it could become a project / hobby in itself. Not an issue if you have the time, money, space and enough items to process over a period of time (making it easier in comparison with several trips to your commercial plater etc) and only then if it works well for you?

Ok.

Might look out for that as well then .. good background reading by the sound of it.

I would. I cam into electronics at the germanium transistor era so never really got involved with valves. I do find them interesting though ... at least you can see *something* going on with them. ;-)

Gotcha.

Like I said, sounds like it might be fun (given the above).

All the best and thanks again ..

T i m

p.s. From what I have learnt so far I'm probably going to check out my mates Grandad's plating Co first and if that falls flat then might try the Caswell Electroless Nickel plating kit.

Reply to
T i m

100 quid or so from Caswell

The cheap "retail" kits aren't much good, as they leave a very soft and porous deposit behind, which won't polish well.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Ah - OK..... thanks

And it's reasonably easy to get a good finish with the Caswell kit ??

I'm thinking that the kit might have other uses - how would one go about plating on a non-metallic object

- say, a seashell ....?

Thanks Adrian

Reply to
Adrian

Can you achieve the black nickel finish currently so popular?

Reply to
Rod

Caswell have a black nickel kit specifically for that. I haven't tried it (yet).

Reply to
Andy Dingley

This is generally described as "electroforming".

One of the main problems with it (for uk.d-i-y practicality) is making your seashell initially conductive. This requires a prior coating of "Aquadag", a colloidal graphite emulsion, and also making stable connections to the Aquadag layer. Aquadag is (AFAIK, corrections welcome) hard to obtain in quantities less than ridiculous for plating purposes. You can also use silver-based conductive paints.

Electroforming is tricky. Much experimentation is required before you get it right. In particular, getting a good connection into your conductive coating is trickier than you'd think.

Once it's successfully plating, then a flash coat of electrolytic nickel, then copper, then nickel again seems to be the way to go.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

That's interesting - thanks...

The silver-plating (or, in the case of my teapot, re-plating) is a simpler proposition, though ?

Adrian

Reply to
Adrian

Again, it needs some practical hands-on experience. As this is expensive for silver, you'd do well to tool up and try out some copper first.

Silver for repair purposes is usually done by "brush" plating. This is still an electrolytic process, not the electroless process in the cheap (=A315) kits, but it doesn't need a full bath of plating solution. AFAIR, some of the clock repair and jewellery sites sell small-volume kits aimed at this, for less than Caswell's bucket-filler.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

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