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Nickel electro-plating engine-bay parts at home [any UK suppliers?]

Could anybody please recommend any good reference sites on electro-plating nickel onto mild-steel? I am also looking for reasonable suppliers of kits (chunks of Nickel anodes to start with and some kind of rheostat so that I don't have to use lightbulbs to vary the current). I'm happy to use a car-battery-charger or even the variable-voltage PSU from a spare mini-Dremel type rotary tool I have as the power source.

I know very little (nothing!) about this process but I just discovered that the fading black-painted peice of metal which I just polished from my engine bay is actually mild-steel and will start to rust soon :)

I'm interested in the reference site so that I can gain a proper understanding of chemicals hopefully so that I'll be able to purchase individual chemicals from supply-houses instead of having to buy ready-made proprietary "Supa Crome(tm), Brite-Cote(tm), Leccy-Shine(tm) (you get the idea)" mixtures.

thanks, Carl

Reply to
carl0s
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A book, if you don't mind: "Electroplating" by J. Poyner; workshop practice series #11. Camden Books has it.

Hth, Nick

Reply to
Nick Müller

GLR advertise nickel plating kits in ME. I have not used them.

01992 470098 ,
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(which didn't work for me)

Posted Via Nuthinbutnews.Com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services

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Reply to
Dave Garnett

Thanks. I found them via

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but this is the first kit I found through google and it requires a string of lightbulbs. I was hoping for something a bit more of this-age. Thanks for the link though. I might end up getting their kit and adding the rest myself.

Reply to
carl0s

Blimey. Another book. I'll never get Scrodingers Cat finished. Off to Amazon.co.uk marketplace then! Cheers :)

Reply to
carl0s

Carl,

Is this what you are looking for:

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Good luck,

Rich

carl0s wrote:

Reply to
dogpoint

Sorry Caswell is not a UK supplier. I missed that.

Rich

dogpo> Carl,

Reply to
dogpoint

Nickel will work better if you first flash the steel with copper. My experience has been that nickel on steel l doesn't provide very good rust protection, but nickel on copper (on steel) works quite well.

Reply to
Don Foreman

no worries. The Caswell stuff does look good, and I just found

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:)

Reply to
carl0s

bugger. Caswell want £110 (nearly $200) for their 1-gallon Nickel plating kit, and £120 for their flash-copper kit. That a lotta money!

Reply to
carl0s

I can't help you with any advice, but I was wondering if you had considered electroless nickel plating. I don't know much about that, either, but perhaps one of the more knowledgable posters could comment on its suitability.

R, Tom Q.

Reply to
Tom Quackenbush

I have come across it at

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and
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but I don't know how much of the talk is just hype. Apparently it gets into places electrolysis doesn't, and there's no danger of anode-shadow (where the shape of the anode differs to the cathode/part to be plated).

Reply to
carl0s

It does as claimed. Disadvantages are:

  1. It must be heated to 180F -- that can take a while.
  2. The chemicals are depleted with use. With electroplating, only the anode gets depleted -- and one anode can do a lot of plating.

I have also had difficulty getting it to "start" on brass, even when I followed the recommendation of touching the workpiece with a bit of steel to get it started.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Nickel without a copper flash is bluish. The copper traps some or most of that color and warms it up. (Like auto bumpers). Some handguns are cool blue.

Martin

Reply to
lionslair at consolidated dot

Interesting! Thanks. Heating to 180F shouldn't prove too difficult for me with such a small part, and I'm not doing brass, so I may take this route. It looks like the electrolysis thing isn't going to be such a quick'n'easy thing to set up (costs add up, with PSU etc.) so I might go for a small electroless setup to begin.

I think I definately need to buy the book Nick recommended so I can save costs!

Reply to
carl0s

This book is realy neat. It was written by a professional having the hobbyists in mind. It lists all the pickles for preparing, all the chemicals you need, has problem tables, shows how to electroplate plasics, tells you what is toxic and how to handle the nasty ingredients, tells what containers you need whatfor (plasic, iron, SS)... Not a thick book, so there was no space left for blabla.

Nick

Reply to
Nick Müller

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