plating

I've used Caswell's copycad & the nickel kit.
It consumed quite a bit of time and some carefull study before I got any consistant results but if you have the patience I'd say go for it on both these kits.
I won't be trying chrome. It seems to me the process produces deadly fumes so your setup is more involved & costs are higher.
So if you have a fair bit of patience and want the convenience of plating a 5 or 6 items here & there as time allows.... this might be your thing.
I must admit it was kinda fun...like doing a science experiment!
On the other hand, if you can have everything ready in 1 or 2 batches and you value your time any higher than say about $8/hr .....I'd say send it out to a reputable shop.
In the long run it'll probably be cheaper.
By the way, Don Turley was selling some super nice plated items over in the swap section of this forum last time I looked...worth checking out.
 

Attachments

  • S7300226.jpg
    S7300226.jpg
    68.6 KB · Views: 83
  • S7300229.jpg
    S7300229.jpg
    74.3 KB · Views: 85
  • S7300232.jpg
    S7300232.jpg
    72 KB · Views: 83
  • S7301865.jpg
    S7301865.jpg
    77.4 KB · Views: 84
  • S7301875.jpg
    S7301875.jpg
    75.8 KB · Views: 84
  • S7301897.jpg
    S7301897.jpg
    71.2 KB · Views: 89
There is a high end restoration shop a few miles from here that does concours type stuff. They use their kits for small and small quanity parts. They told me on a tour of the facility that it took some time to get it right by recording temps of the metal and temps of the soultions and temp of the air. They have a book they developed over time so they plug in the numbers and see the volatge and duration needed.
 
Thanks for sharing first hand experience. Did you buy the rectifier from them and what amperage?


Craig Lewis said:
I've used Caswell's copycad & the nickel kit.
It consumed quite a bit of time and some carefull study before I got any consistant results but if you have the patience I'd say go for it on both these kits.
I won't be trying chrome. It seems to me the process produces deadly fumes so your setup is more involved & costs are higher.
So if you have a fair bit of patience and want the convenience of plating a 5 or 6 items here & there as time allows.... this might be your thing.
I must admit it was kinda fun...like doing a science experiment!
On the other hand, if you can have everything ready in 1 or 2 batches and you value your time any higher than say about $8/hr .....I'd say send it out to a reputable shop.
In the long run it'll probably be cheaper.
By the way, Don Turley was selling some super nice plated items over in the swap section of this forum last time I looked...worth checking out.
Click to expand...
 
road_king said:
Thanks for sharing first hand experience. Did you buy the rectifier from them and what amperage?
Click to expand...

I tried several power supplies from plug-in wall adapters to batteries. In the end my best results have been from an old battery charger with a reostat to control the amperage.
After burning up a couple wire-wound reostats(they're hard to find) ....I finally just stretched out a coil spring and wired it in series with the whole mess. I move the aligator clip up and down the spring till the battery charger reads my correct amperage. The spring still gets hot...just like the reostat...but so far it seems like the answer.
Idealy you want to find a variarc as the ultimate power supply...but I haven't got that lucky yet.

One last thing ... you'll also need to setup a copper tank if you do nickel. Copper is your filler and primer.
Copper plating requires a seperate list of materials, all which I purchased seperately.
The Caswell big yellow manual includes basic copper instructions. You definately need that manual and one should keep some notes regarding time & amperage in order to get consistant results.
I hope this helps.
 

Attachments

  • S7301907.jpg
    S7301907.jpg
    77.6 KB · Views: 61
  • S7301880.jpg
    S7301880.jpg
    61.7 KB · Views: 70
  • S7301886.jpg
    S7301886.jpg
    72.2 KB · Views: 68
  • S7301912.jpg
    S7301912.jpg
    65.1 KB · Views: 70
Last edited:
Craig,

Is that wire in the second picture glowing? This looks interesting, are the parts fairly readily available?

Mike
 
Craig, thanks for the good info., I've been reading previous threads and can tell you've been at this for awhile. Have you tried the small electro-plating system, the one w/the brush that you have to keep dipping in solution? I also need to have the rad. shell & rear bumpers plated, I was planning on taking these parts to a commercial shop. Can anyone give me a "ballpark" est. on cost? I was going to have the rad. shell nickel plated, and the bumpers chrome plated. Would it be cheaper to just buy these parts new?
 
I haven't tried the brush plating but that would be handy for nickel plating of the w/shield slider arm studs.

Really I haven't as much experiance as you might think with plating and what you see are all parts of my coupe which I'm learning on. Some of the pieces you see have been stripped and replated 4 or 5 times before I got it to the colour/finish that looked right.
I probably had a week of experiance total, setting up and plating a few parts.
I must say the replating experiance gave me an abundantly clear understanding of why good plating costs what it does :)
 
Brush plating is not that good for nickel. The nickel will pasivate quickly and then as you build up the layer, it will flake off. Brush plating is excellent for cad though, I spent many long hours brush plating cad on F-111 airframes when in the RAAF. One thing to be careful of is wearing a hole in the absorbant sock that covers the anode, this is the bit that holds the solution. If a hole develops, you will arc a hole into your work piece. On D6A-C steel that F-111 airframes were made of, this was something to make sure that you did not do.
 
allison-tech said:
Craig, thanks for the good info., I've been reading previous threads and can tell you've been at this for awhile. Have you tried the small electro-plating system, the one w/the brush that you have to keep dipping in solution? I also need to have the rad. shell & rear bumpers plated, I was planning on taking these parts to a commercial shop. Can anyone give me a "ballpark" est. on cost? I was going to have the rad. shell nickel plated, and the bumpers chrome plated. Would it be cheaper to just buy these parts new?
Click to expand...

Give Bert's in Denver a call. They had replated original parts for sale the last I knew. 800-321-1931
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top