Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

Nickel plating before acid copper?

Q. Good morning to all,

I have recently ventured into electroplating. I am a very curious person who wants to learn and I don't mind trying things and making mistakes if I learn something from it. My main hobby is restoring old motorcycles and until now I have taken the parts to be plated by specialists, but I find the problem that sometimes they are small parts and little quantity and the costs are very high, so I have decided to try to do the nickel plating myself of these little pieces. They are mostly made of different types of steel. The idea is to give a layer of copper and another on top of nickel.

I have read a lot in this forum about it and my way of proceeding has been as follows:

I strip the part of possible dirt and old plating layers with 20% HCl. It works great and leaves the pieces perfect.

I rinse in distilled water and then apply an electric cleaning with a solution based on caustic soda ⇦liquid caustic soda in bulk on Amazon [affil link] , sodium bicarbonate and trisodium phosphate ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] .

I rinse the piece again in water and immerse it in the copper bath, according to the solution for one liter:

200gr - CuSO4·5H2O
100ml - sulfuric acid (pure) - I use a concentration of 14.5%, so I readjust this amount.
0.3ml - HCl
I also use sodium lauryl sulphate (0.25 gr) and sodium saccharide (2 gr) as a brightener.

The problem arose for me that the piece was covered with a kind of copper dust as soon as it was inserted, which is rubbed off with the hand, and no strong copper adheres to the piece.

I have read that I must use Wood's nickel strike before copper plating.

I have read some recipes:

240g/L NiCL2.6H2O + 120ml/L HCl
70g/L NiCL2.6H2O + 13g/L HCl

But I have doubts. How much HCl is pure? I have a concentration of 20%.

On the other hand I would appreciate any ideas or advice about this.

Thanks!

A. Hi Juan. If it works, it works, but the electrocleaning should be done before the HCl acid activation, not after.

Wood's Nickel Strike was invented for activating stainless steel and old nickel plating, whereas any nickel plating will adhere to steel, so the ratios are not critical for your situation -- but I like Robert Probert's numbers because they're so easy to remember: 1 pound per gallon nickel chloride / 1 quart per gallon HCl.

If you plate successfully, send a photo to mooney@finishing.com for posting here.

Luck & Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
October 2021

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October 2, 2021

A. Hi Juan
You can not easily plate copper onto steel from an acid sulphate bath. It forms an immersion deposit with poor adhesion, as you have found.
Copper is usually plated onto steel from a cyanide bath. Not something for an amateur.
As Ted says, Wood's nickel is for plating onto stainless and similar metals.
If your cleaning is good a simple Watts nickel bath should plate directly onto steel. You can use additives to give a bright deposit but for small quantities a simple bath without additives is easiest and polish after plating.
If your motorcycle is old, i.e., nickel without chrome on top, this is probably the original process.

Geoff Smith
Hampshire, England

⇩ Related postings, oldest first ⇩

Q. Hi,

I am a well educated professional chemist and a hobbyist motorcycle restorer.

In pursuit of my restoration endeavors I have been trying to learn how to nickel plate my old motorcycle parts (learning chemistries of all sorts is also my hobby so I insist of doing it myself, I have access to almost any chemical, safety equipment, and proper disposal outlets). My goal is to produce a bright nickel finish on mild steel and cast iron parts. I want to first plate the semi-polished parts with nickel then build up with acid copper for easy buffing prior to bright nickel.

I have experimented with variations of a Watts style nickel sulphate bath, that I concocted from reading patents, academic journals, and web sites. I can achieve nice uniform, semi-bright deposits when plating 1x10 cm mild steel strips (unpolished, activated in dilute HCl/HNO3) in a homemade Hull Cell with my Watts solution at 50 °C, and a current density of about 10-30 ASF with a pure nickel anode. The plate adheres well, what I mean by this is: I can bend the strip back and forth until it breaks without the nickel cracking off, and if you dip the part in acid copper solution no immersion deposits are formed, also you can buff the heck out of them without wearing the nickel off. I get similar results plating copper strips.

Here's the problem: when I try to plate over the nickel layer with my acid copper solution (H2SO4, CuSO4, NaCl) I can get a nice uniform plate under various bath compositions in the Hull Cell, at 10-90 ASF, and 25-40 °C, but the copper cracks off the nickel layer very easy when I bend the strip. I have tried reversing the current on the nickel-plated strip for one minute at ~30 ASF in the copper solution prior to plating and this helps but still seems unreliable. Activating the nickel layer in 30% H2SO4 doesn't seem to help either. I get good adhesion to copper with these baths. Sometimes the copper plate causes sections of the nickel to pull away from the steel base metal as if it has weekend the bond between the nickel and steel but this is less common.

Everywhere I read it sounds trivial to plate copper onto nickel, so why doesn't mine work!?

Best Regards,

A. Hi Jeffrey. It may (or may not) be trivial to plate copper onto fresh nickel plating (plated within the last 15 seconds) but it is not at all easy to plate onto old nickel with proper adhesion. What is worth trying is activating your semi-bright nickel plating with a Wood's Nickel strike immediately before the copper plating. Good luck.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007

A. Hobby plating is not for the meek. You won't get it done any cheaper or better in the long run. Plus the process is messy, dirty and stinky.
Acid copper plating is an enhancement to the final finish, not a short cut in polishing. You just end up putting more copper on than needed which can cause fitting problems with the parts. And despite acid copper's efficiency, it is still subject to the dynamics of electroplating. It will not level out enough to make up for less than ideal polishing. The copper may be soft, but can come out so high density deformed that it turns into an aggravating metal sculpturing job instead.
And just for the record. Reversing polarity in a plating bath is a sure fire way of killing the bath in a short period of time.

Frank DeGuire
- St. Louis, Missouri, USA
2007

Copper plating onto nickel

Q. Hi everyone,
i am restoring a couple of single shot .22 rifles, and the final aim is to copper plate the living sulfur Hydrogen Indium Tellurium out of the receiver and barrel (3-5 mm thick), to the point where it looks like a coral encrusted shipwrecked cannon, except with twinkly copper crystals instead of coral.

I have no problem nickel plating onto steel (caustic boil 30 min, HCl etch, NiCl+citrate, +ammonia)

THE PROBLEM COMES when I stick my nicely nickel plated receiver into CuSO4. I get an immersion/substitution deposit, and the whole thing turns to copper powder, and it is hard to get rid of the copper patches … it is like a virus, I am guessing this is because of the fact that copper is more noble than hydrogen, whereas nickel is less noble than hydrogen.

Once I get a good copper strike onto nickel, I have no problem copper plating from there (CuSO4 + enough sugar to kill a horse as a slowing agent).

SO THE QUESTION IS How the Fluorine do I get a copper strike onto nickel without cyanide or other toxic stuff.

I have access to Citric, Hydrochloric, sulfuric, acetic acid ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] s, NaOH, bicarb, ammonia, Manganese sulphate, zinc sulphate ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , 3V open circuit x7A short circuit, and 75VOC x0.6A SC power supplies, current limiters and voltage droppers,

I have chosen copper as my final layer because it is relatively easy to get hold of oodles of it, but I don't have the money to put that much nickel all over everything.
And a final note, please don't tell me to take it to a professional; I want to do this myself for the sake of learning, and pride.

All security regulations will be followed.
Metal salts will be neutralised and oxides dried kept for later use, NaCl goes down the drain.
Critical pin holes will be plugged with graphite