• Topic #44081 "Patina on nickel, Artificial aging"

A. Good question! The earliest documents I have in my library are from 1941, which isn't nearly old enough for me to be able to help much. You might want to visit the Garden State Branch AESF Library at New Brunswick Plating [a finishing.com supporting advertiser] in New Brunswick, NJ, as it is probably the best historical plating library in the hemisphere. Here is a reprint of some of their early documents about nickel plating...

Another source of historical info might be the International Nickel Company (INCO).

In the October 1989 issue of Plating & Surface Finishing, columnist W.H. Safranek (dec.) notes that the first nickel brightener was patented in 1908 and the first commercial bright nickel wasn't patented until 1936. However, his column relates his knowledge that buffing was used to get bright nickel deposits in the 1930s and I inferred from it his belief that buffing to brightness probably goes back to the earliest days of nickel plating. Put it this way, why wouldn't they buff it to brightness since buffing/polishing was well known? That doesn't mean they did, just that it's my guess that they did; but I think you can find out for sure at the Garden State Branch AESF Library what they actually did.

Nickel has a yellowish cast compared to the more bluish nickel-chrome plating; this yellow cast gets quite pronounced over time due to tarnishing of the nickel. There is an absolutely beautiful example of 1917 nickel plating in the Woodrow Wilson Museum in Staunton, Virginia. I totally loved the nickel plating on the president's Pierce-Arrow but did not have an opportunity to speak to the curators about how much replating (if any) was done, and if so how they decided what it looked like in 1917.

Keep in touch on this project!

A. I can confirm that there was a bright nickel process as early as 1929. That's the earliest document I have found here. If fact the brightener was called Nibright. I found documentation on black nickel as early as 1937.

A. Some of the very old Nickel Plating that I have seen looks buffed to a high level of luster after plating. I guess bright has always been the IN thing and I do not think that the satin finish or matte was normally preferred back then.

A. Two very good books about 19th century plating can be free downloaded, Alexander Watts Electro-Metallurgy and James Napiers Manual of electro-metallurgy, www.digitalbookindex.com!

Hope it helps!

Darn you, Goran! I'm so busy on a dozen things that I'm tearing my hair out, and then you go and introduce me to a website where I just can't resist frittering away hours at a stretch :-)

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

A. Very useful website for information about old style nickel plating(and about plating, colouring, soldering, cleaning and polishing of metals): http://thelitterbox.org/librum/i-sacof/ (Scientific American Cyclopedia of Formulas, 1910.)

A. If you haven't already found it, a specific article that may be helpful would be "Electro-Plating of Metals: Methods of Nickel Plating" Scientific American Supplement 70 (Dec. 24, 1910): 405-406

[from: Metals in America's Historic Buildings [on on Amazonaffil links] published by the National Park Service, 1992]

A. This response is probably too late for your consideration, but I'll post anyway. I have just received a salesman sample kit of old snake buckles which is thought to date from the 1890s from Britain. The buckle inventory numbers were followed by a letter that relates to the plating. Most of these buckles and their keepers, through which the cloth belts looped when mounted, were of steel or iron (magnetic) and plated. A number of them are nickel plated and the plating is shiny - similar to the nickel plating on early nineteen hundred carbide cap lamps, but they were nickel plated brass. The two sample cards of buckles had a fleece sided cloth that covered the buckles and served to keep their surfaces from being scratched or rubbed, when the two cards were closed into a case.

Hi, David. This page is read by thousands of readers over the years, so a response like yours is never too late :-)   Thanks

Luck & Regards,

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

A. Hi Tony. Do you remember "The Dress" which trended on the internet a new years ago because millions of viewers saw it as gold & white, while other millions saw it as blue & black?

Be aware that 'blue tint' and 'yellow tint' are very subtle things which you'll probably only be able to see in side-by-side comparison. Find a friend with a shiny Harley and put your graphophone outside right next to its chainguards and other brightwork, and tell us what you see then :-)

Visual appearance is unfortunately a very poor indicator of what something is anyway. Your graphophone may be nickel plated, and someone may have clear coated it, or they might have had it chrome plated at some point. You can do a destructive test by finding an inconspicuous area and carefully (wearing googles and gloves) rub it with muriatic acid to remove any chrome. After rinsing very well and drying, you'll have your built-in side-by-side comparison if it was chrome plated.

If you have more friends than me, maybe you also know someone who works in a scrapyard: most these days have handheld alloy sorter / scrap sorter ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] X-ray fluorescence machines which can detect chrome instantly and non-destructively -- but they start at $35-40K

Luck & Regards,