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Did you use a carbon steel brush when you cleaned them up?

I agree with Don for a change Steve! The reason your part looked dull and spotty in parts was that you were plating at too high a voltage Steve. Twelve volts is just too high. No more than four is needed and if then you can keep the amps down as well it will nickel plate perfectly. The stuff I did a year ago is still looking good and no sign of any fusing at all. I've just made a rotary broach and plated it and it looks a little dull as I really need to filter the crap out of the nickel solution. Also when you use too much voltage it makes the crap appear very quickly as it did in your test. Try getting more nickel into solution by filtering the crap out of what you made and start the process off again. The more you plate the stronger the solution gets and the better the results are with less voltage. Just give it a try but I'd do the copper plating first as you have it set up. The thicker the copper plating the more rust resistant the final nickel results will be. Happy plating sir! 30 minutes in you said you didn't have any grease on your hands. Even if you have wiped your hands with acetone within 30 seconds you have your natural skin oils back to the surface. Steve, clean the part and put gloves on before you do it and keep them on until the plating process is finished, both the nickel and copper solutions are poisonous and can be absorbed via the skin. So keep your hands covered at all times while doing the plating.

Hey Steve. I have never done any of this before but it’s on my list to anodize aluminum. Just for giggles and shits I wonder if you boiled the water first and tried it when it cools down to say about 140-150 deg or so. I don’t know it was a thought in my head I figured I’d share. I love experimenting

If you consider ohms law, v=ir, and you have a constant i, then the v has to change to since you have a floating r value. You have a floating resistance because of the liquid, bubbles, etc. If you set a constant voltage, the amps will float

But you have taken the depth guide off????? Wouldn't that make a big difference

It really doesn’t matter, you have to degrease, how you do it is your problem to find what works. Usually it is copper, nickel then chrome, if you copper over nickel it sometimes doesn’t work due to impurities in the metals and anodes. The quality of the vinegar base is important, some use non distilled water to dilute and that is a problem with some solutions you make. Distilled vinegar is best at 10%, 30% is a waste except as a cleaner. Same with salts try and get as pure as you can. Polish and degrease and rinse between solution changes. Your anodes need to connect out of solution if you have any copper on the nickel anode in the solution you plate copper and nickel. The voltage variations is due partially to connections to the power supply, solution contamination and the will of the gods. Turtle wax is your friend. Then science the hell out of it. Good luck.

My understanding of the process is to do it gradually, turn the amps down to 2 -3 ( not so aggressive ) you’ll get a more consistent coating

The handles have to insert when you turn the feed by hand, a litle turnof the handcranck puts in the nob to the feedtread so it turns, when you loos the handcrack the power feed can take over the fors without turning the hanlde so it whont hurt you. So if the BP is with powerfeed you had to put the originals on Steve. Airbubbles will gives an even layer on the item, mostly using an fishtank airpump. It keeps the solution on the move.

Steve, can you tell what the model of the power supply is?

I would have thought a water solution of copper sulphate might be better than vinegar and common salt for the copper plating. Similarly I would have used a solution of nickel sulphate for the nickel plating.

I don't know much about plating, but I do know you have to get time, temperature, physical connection of wire to the work piece, chemistry, voltage and amperage all just right or else you'll live in disappointment. I salute you for trying.

I admit that "I know Nothing" (as says Sergeant Schultz) ... about metal plating, I do know something about growing crystals... at 15:45, all of that metallic frass copper at the bottom of your plating vessel may be drawing your copper 'AWAY' from your intended target ... the handles. If I was growing sugar crystals, that much sugar at the bottom would draw all of the rest of the sugar out of solution (seeding), down to their location, leaving a mess on the bottom, instead of a large single crystal on the line in the center. Maybe I'm wrong ... just a thought. Glad to see you got rid of it for the subsequent try. At 30:25, your skin is constantly sweating salty water and skin oil, please use gloves to prevent transfers from either direction, chemicals into your body or salt and skin oil out of your body.

Blahahaha...he said PeKKKer Head!😮😂

ruclips.net/video/bl89_dCFvaw/видео.htmlsi=7LmTUKEHJJuFyDFA Dave M

@TheMiniMachineShop Dave M😊

I have also been watching "Mark Pershing" from Australia or New Z-land where he is always plating/coating things he makes as things must rust a lot there. Give him a look and maybe it will help. He seams to have a clue and dose very nice work. If nothing else you can blame him and give Don a small break.

Polish to a mirror finish, heavy copper coat, lightly repolish, then heavy chrome. Ohm's Law E=I×R or Voltage = Current × Resistance I'd bet that the other numbers are Wattage P = I × R or Power = Current ×Resistance.

clear coat laquer

Safety handles, they free wheel when the power feed is running. But to use them, you have to curl the handle in your fingers and move the hand wheel until the pin drops in one of the slots, then you can crank the table. I had them on my Bridgeport when I first got it. They were a monumental PITA, nothing but aggravation. I ended up buying new ones from H&W and tossing the others in the scrap. That is to say I bought solid handles as replacements.

About 7 years ago I bought a nickel plating kit from Caswell it wasn't cheap maybe $250 but it works very well I have plted many steel and cast iron parts without any problems. The instructions are very good explaining amperage based on part surface are. They give you everything you need heaters circulating pump chemicals and 2 large nickel anodes. Well worth the money.

My brother ran an anodizing plant. Anodizing is the plating process for aluminum, but I’m pretty sure plating steel is basically the same process. He said the dirty little secret in the industry is that little jobs like yours are needed to even out the current density thruout the plating tank. When the plant is treating a large workpieces like a batch of 30’ long parking lot light poles, they put scrap metal in the corners of the tank. My brother said the price they charged boat builders to anodize cleats and other deck hardware was incredible, but he was stuck charging the industry standard price schedule. I’d bet the ferrous plating shops have the same situation. There are an ever-decreasing number of anodizing and ferrous plating shops in the country. So if the scarcity of plating shops don’t get ya, shipping charges will!

Get Don to give them a wipe over with an oily rag when you go fishing. Sorted👍

clean them with brush and acetone the way you like them to look and spray them with clear coat paint. I have done this with chrome wheels and it has lasted a few years

Steve, James over at Clough42 did some plating with good success....ruclips.net/video/JSlnvkI04TU/видео.htmlsi=EXLq4mAV63jxStEu Thanks for the great content

Try boeshield it works great on Cast iron. It might do the same for plated metals.

Looks like a good result in the end. Perseverance comes through once again.

The fuzzy look is likely because you are growing whiskers. IIRC whiskers grow around active sites on the surface and you need to add a surfactant . I have been told in the early days they found tobacco juice was good for chrome, so they hired kids to stand around the plating bath, chew and spit into the bath. well true or not, times have changed and you can buy surfactants. Commercial platers buy it all premixed and which surfactant is probably proprietary. I bet some gargling might find some suggestions, heck a little dish soap might help, i dont know, but that is a surfactant. the second variable is current density, amps/sqcm of item to be plated. Voltage IIRC is kept within a range to keep from driving the wrong reactions. Bath conductivity is controlled by the amount of salts added to the bath.

Looking pretty good! Guess you've found your method.

This is why platers charge so much.

Leaving insulation BECAUSE you will be wasting less nickle on the wire. Electrical wire can be crushed in the center and removed. It's the current that electroplates, not the voltage, 6 Volts is nominal. Slower electroplating is better with a LESS sponge like surface. Ron W4BIN

The power supply has a finite limit on the power that it can deliver. Power (Watts) is the product of Volts X Amps. Imagine that the PS can deliver a maximum of 16 Watts. You could set Volts to 16 and Amps to 1. No problem. But if you try to set Amps to 2 then the Volts will have to adjust down to 8, 2x8=16. If you set the Volts to 32 then the Amps will have to adjust down to 0.5, 32x0.5=16. You can set values lower. For example, you could set Volts to 12 and Amps to 1; the product is 12x1=12 which is less than the max of 16. Get the idea?

Greetings from Nacogdoches. I’m enjoying morning coffee and watching your latest video.

They're safety handles, just in case you or anyone gets caught up in it while power feeding. How you operate it, before you engage the table power feed you're supposed to twist the handle and unlock it so the handle free spins.

How about a ceramic coating like they do on exhaust headers for cars. It might not look as shiny, but it wont rust.

Electrodeposition is a function of current not voltage. The variation in voltage is a function of the conductivity of the solution and the number of bubbles on the surface.

You should check out Jere Kirkpatrick he has a 4 part series on plating he also uses a small pump to keep the solution flowing.

Very interesting video on your trials of plating Steve. There is a product called Shark hide That a friend of mine uses on the his Hotrod to protect uncoated parts of aluminum and steel from corrosion that works very good. Thanks

Thanks Steve. Hope the wax does the job because they look great now.

Don is correct. It is meant to be a safety feature, but like many, the solution is worse than the problem. I have one on my Bridgeport. The idea is that the handle does not engage when left free, so when the powerfeed runs it does not bash your knuckles. When you want to hand turn, the first movement of the handle is a twist motion that engages the hub. Its a right pain as you have to keep the twist motion engaged. Am thinking of getting rid of it.

You have to polish the copper coating to get a perfectly smooth copper coating so the much thinner nickel then chrome coatings can stick

My brother in 1970 build a 400 amp 25 volt plating power supply for a guy named Jay Core. Jay's business card read. New lamps for old. Small countries over thrown. Tennis balls refuzzed. Jay was in the antique brass lamp business. To keep his supply of brass lamps. He would drive around looking for nice brass lamps. Write down the address. Look in a lamp catalog and order new low cost nice looking lamps. Then hire guys. Supply tools, ladders. Work orders. And send them out to remove the old brass lamps and install the nice looking new ones and bring back the old lamps for replating to resell. He never got caught. Can you imagine. Calling the police. Somebody stole my brass lamps and installed new ones. My home phone number was a former Silo store phone number. Think circuit city. A lady called complaining about the chrome pealing from the stove she had purchased before I could tell her they were out of business. I did give her a solution. She lived in West Hollywood. I ask if she could remove the chrome stove top. Yes. Scrub it totally clean inside and out. Take it over to the bumper plating shop in west hollywood. Expect an odd reaction I warned her. Those guys are so tired of doing bumpers. They will be fighting over doing a stove top. A few weeks later she called me back. They were excited to help me. They did a fabulous job. It looks beautiful. Oh. I use current liming power supplies to recharge slowly deeply discharged batteries that have not been boosted or charged on a conventional charger. I set the open circuit voltage to 17 volts. Then the short circuit current to 0.3 amps. Then hook up the battery. Then let it recharge slowly. I have had a lot of success with deeply discharged batteries that the parasitic draws took it below 9 volts. I have done batteries that sat dead for 6 months. At 25 minutes. Perhaps you have not set open voltage then short circuit amps properly. Open circuit is leads not touching. Then short circuit current is leads touching each other.

Looking forward to the 1 year update on these.

the nickel plating institute has a pdf you can download 2023-nickelplatinghandbooka5_printablepdf.pdf its a how to pdf

according to the manual its called a quick release safety handle to stop it from spinning page 2-17 in my manual

Also you do the plating all at once, not in layers.

When I worked in a plating area we never touched the parts till all the plating was done. we used deionized water for a rinse then put it in the next plating.

They look great Steve! I’m pretty sure a bit of wax will help beat off the rust. It’s what I use on my cast iron tools and I’m just up the road from you.

Vinager comes in different strengths is your strong enough?. You want it bright finished I assume so blueing or parkering like in gun barrels might be out,but tool coating like taps and bits might be something to look into.find a company that has a chemical engineer to talk to for a lead.I seen a RUclips video of spray chrome finish of motorcycles and car parts that done in a spray booth not a tank.

Steve,check into parkerizing,it's cheap,holds up well to rust,and easy enough to do,the only downfall is the matte finish...

Mr. Watkins put first Copper on the handle than nickel.