Zinc plating

Not sure where to put this one kinda fits about anywhere you have hardware.

I got the Caswell Copy Cad/zinc plating set up and must say it works pretty good.

here is a shot of some parts before and after.



The prep is critical, I would not try it without a blast cabinet. and glass bead doesn't work very good as it will not remove the old coating down to the base metal unless its in a pitted/corroded area. The zinc will not plate on old chrome. and does not like old nickel much either. if you get it down to the old copper or bare steel its great.


Here are some more that just came out of the plating tank and some I dipped into a black chromate solution. its not as glossy but for my bike the black is a good look. its still Zinc but now has a black Oxide finish that is even more corrosion resistant.





I will say it is fairly time consuming. takes about 20 mins per batch and the prep and set up is long and painful. if you only have a hand full of parts and can get them done local for 40 - 60 bucks that is way cheaper. now that being said, there is some satisfaction to doing it yourself and the chemicals will last a very long time (years) so you could actually save some $ over several bikes.

now that I have the power supply and some experience, I am going to try some Chrome plating and maybe some bronze. suppose to be able to plate on plastic too.

I may try to figure out my own chemicals. I did a bunch of research and tried that path first but did not have much success. The pre-done mixes like Caswell are the way to go. until you know whats what, then you might be ok with you own concoctions.

Dman

WOW that looks great. I bet it does feel good doing it your self.
Mark

I found if I'm needing the plating removed from hardware to buy some Naval Jelly (the kind to remove rust from metal parts)Get a container not going to be used for food,put some Naval Jelly in the container enough to cover the parts,let it sit for a few hours to overnight,remove the parts with some needle nose or tongs,and then use hot water and soap to scrub off the plating residue. I use an old small sieve with a handle to avoid touching the Naval Jelly.


The parts might need a scrubing with a wire brush and scotch-brite to remove any old plating in the threads on fasterners, but the plating will be stripped away by the action of the Naval Jelly.

My Wife hates it, but I then dry the parts,spray them with high temp paint and bake in our oven at 350-425 F for about an hour. I do this with the windows open as the fumes can stink up the house for a while with them closed.I've done this to several bolts and brackets on my bike with no rusting being noticed.

For even drying/baking I suspend the parts on the oven racks with clothes hanger wires and may have to touch them up with a re-spray if a hanger hole was unpainted.

Once you get thru the chrome with a bead blast the nickle comes off with a dip in the Hydrochloric acid bath. I did a bunch more today. getting the hang of what you can do or not. I would not recommend it to any one with out a ton of patience. It is pretty tedious to prep and dip all the steps you need to do. It still is pretty satisfying to plate what ever yanks your crank. I ended up doing way more than I would have if I had sent them out. not a cost thing but some stuff I didnt even consider say a month ago. There is the time thing too. If I am putting something together and at that moment decide to plate something, 30 minutes later I am bolting on a freshly plated bolt or part. cant do that if you send them out.

Care to Zinc my frame?

That's awesome! How does it compare in cost to sending it out?

I have no idea, I never really checked. there is no local shop so I would be shipping it out and I didn't want to have to guess which parts and hardware I wanted to do or not.

I always wanted to try it anyway, just gave me a good excuse.

Have you looked into the issue of hydrogen embrittlement? This can cause a problem with steel fasteners in that they tend to become brittle and can fracture under stress when hydrogen is absorbed into the metal during the acid cleaning and electroplating process. The good news is that hydrogen can be purged from the metal by heating it - different temperatures and times depending on the type of steel. This can be done in a normal household oven. Take a look at "hydrogen embrittlement" on the internet; there's a bunch of interesting info there. Ed

Did little looking into it, it apparently is only a problem on high strength steel like grade 8 stuff. I don't think there is any grade 8 fasteners except maybe on the motor. it is more of a concern with hot dip zinc in the preplating acid pickling stage but it can be a problem for the electroplated in the alkaline cleaning and or the alkaline plating solution.

where did you get your kit dude?
i could do with getting all the new hardware done on my front end.

thx.

It's basically the Caswell copy cad/zinc kit but I only bought the solution, brightener and manual from them.

I purchased the rest of the stuff from fleabay and local. like the power supply, zinc bar, buckets and other chemicals.

I was trying to make my own solution but the main plating one never worked near as good as the Caswell. Everything else is standard stuff like Muratic pool acid, sulfuric battery acid, TSP, Sodium hydroxide (lye) and is no problem to find.

THE fastest, no hassel way to get into it is get everything from Caswell. you can be plating in a few hours after you get the kit.

you still need a power source. a used one on fleabay can be cheap or make your own. a small motorcycle battery even works but is hard to control.

how about nickle plating ,anybody have experiance with this?im burned out on chrome plating im just trying to picture how it would look on bike stuff it reminds me of polished aluminum,and polished aluminum looks tons better than chrome plated aluminum in my book!