Nickel and Gold Plating onto Bronze Workpiece

A. Hi Ryan.

We have a number of threads about plating on bronze including 11395, 28477, 31565, and 60064.
If I was ever involved with a plating cycle for bronze castings, I don't remember it, but I would think that copper plating before the nickel plating is highly advisable because nickel can be a finicky process which doesn't work great on mixed metals like brass and bronze and castings. 5-10 microns is probably enough.

Then the nickel plating, and again 5-10 microns sounds like a reasonable number.

The gold is tougher to say for the simple reason that it is a precious metal, so no matter how little you apply, someone will think you should apply less. Indeed that story has been in progress for many decades, with gold thicknesses on both decorative & engineered parts now being just a tiny fraction of what they were 50 or 60 years ago. So I'll say 2 microns of gold, leaving room for others to say that's too much. High purity gold, if thick enough to be pore-free, is extremely corrosion resistant and does not require any top coat.

Samples should be plated at your anticipated thicknesses before you get too deep into the design.
Luck & Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey