Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve 940
Hi Dave,
Great information, much appreciated, and good to see you're using what appears to be the kitchen sink for a much better purpose than washing up😀
Was in middle of searching online for nickel, seems a tad pricey as I was looking for sheet to wrap my large bin, but from your information it's more about creating the solution, so could get away with say 3-4 smallish pieces of nickel sheet around the bin to actually do the plating.
Thanks for your link to nickel on eBay, can you recall if you used the rods or sheet pieces?
I do have a whole box full of old copper plumbing fittings that don't have solder in the ends, so ancient I think they are the old 1/2" & 3/4" but would need cleaning up first, also have quite a bit of tubing. White vinegar I already have virtually a full 5 litre bottle.
Will do a bit more further research on the process just so I understand it as far as possible. Perhaps do a few test runs on some scraps first.
Cheers,
Steve
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You're not wrong Steve, kitchen sinks have so many more uses and besides - i have a dishwasher for washing up, once i've finished cleaning my wheels of course!
I used nickel plate as shown in the second (?) pic above, fairly sure this is the YT vid i got the basic info from :
https://youtu.be/G-PtnwtOR24
I forgot to mention a pinch of salt in with the solution but the vid mentions it. I know nickel is pricey in terms of £/kg but a little goes a long way, don't forget you're only plating something like 50um onto the workpiece which although enough to protect and colour it (and maybe even polish if you felt so inclined) the standard matt/satin finish is usually nice enough and less likely to return to anything else like a polished finished would as it would always need polishing to keep it shiny.
As long as it's copper it will work, no jokes about only being able to plate Imperial threads if the copper bits are inches rather than Metric!
They tried that on me as an apprentice and were told "Yeah, ok" by me but i didn't believe them then either!
It sounds as if you have all the necessary bits and pieces to perform an experimental run on making copper acetate plating solution and then copper plating something without any expense, just a bit of time. As you might guess from my pics above, when i did it it was more about "proof of concept" than plating big things and besides, most of what i wanted to plate was small anyway. Daresay i could get a brake caliper into the tub if i tried, it's ~8x8x12", bought for a couple of quid from Wilko but any plastic tub will do. Came with a lid so i can store it reasonably safely until i next want to nickel plate something.
