Nickel Plating Brass

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

My attempt a nickel plating was all done at room temperature with distilled vinegar from Sainsbury's and some sheet nickel from ebay.

The driver was this ebay purchase. Sadly I didn't take any before pictures but this is the ebay pic.

About 50% of the plating was falling off and much of the metal underneath was rusty so I scrubbed as much as I could off and then dunked the major component parts in Evaporust. A further scrub and wash before plating which worked fine even going into the pits left by the rust removal. The handle went particularly well. It has all been buffed.

The new milling spindle was fabricated from a piece of steel plate (probably EN3B) and a length of FC mild bar.

These 2 bits were silver soldered together and then dunked in brick cleaner (HCl) to remove the flux and scale. After that they were plated in the Nickel Acetate solution

I was interested (and slightly annoyed) to see that the flux/acid combination has etched the surface of the FC steel but I am still happy with the result.

I don't know how well stuck the plating is but it did at least survive a trip to the buffing wheel.

Rod

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