Do It Yourself Nickel and other Plating

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A. Hi Kyle. There is virtually nothing a person "can't do", but some things are more involved than one might first think, so if you can find such a shop near you, a plating jobshop which serves consumers and the public may be able to serve you better than you can do yourself. Businesses always have minimum lot charges, so if you can accumulate those old parts from a number of reels the process will be more economical.

If you feel doing it yourself is the better route, please start by downloading our "Intro to Chrome Plating", and the Metal Finishing Guidebook (while available) and thumb through it for a general idea of what plating involves, what different metals can be electrodeposited, and the vagaries of the various substrates you may need to plate onto (it's not just the plating that varies, but different substrates like aluminum, stainless steel, & diecastings each have radically different initial steps, and many times the plating is multilayer like copper > nickel > chrome.

Some platings must be stripped, some inherently get stripped by the preparation process, some can be activated and built upon, but you can't plate over rust, pits, scratches, or dings -- they must be polished out first. Your pic looks to me like nickel plating followed by chrome plating.

Luck & Regards,

A. Hey Martin, You might be half right about the ordinary part, But, you still wouldn't plate a useful deposit. Only about 5 - 10% of the platers even try to make some of the chemistry used in plating/finishing.

The Coy part, for me any way, is mostly for your safety, and my environment. I have concerns. What do YOU (not you but some of the do-it-yourself-ers) do after the plating? Down the drain?

Earth week is just passed and for my part I'd like to let the professionals do the plating along with the waste treatment. Save our planet. I'll step down now. Plating really is more tech. than you think. Regards, Fred

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A. Hi, Martin. No coyness, a Watts Nickel plating bath is:

- 225 to 300 g/l NiSO4.6H2O (nickel sulphate hexahydrate)

- 37 to 53 g/l NiCl2.6H2O (nickel chloride hexahydrate)

- 30 to 45 g/l H3BO3 (boric acid)

- Operated at 140 °F.

If you want it to be bright, the ASM Metals Handbook, Vol. 5 has a chapter that explains how to formulate a plating solution for yourself using readily available generic addition agents like coumarin, formaldehyde, saccharin and sodium lauryl sulphate -- and why you need four (4), not one. The balance of the info you seek is in that or nearly any plating book you can find -- please see our "must have" book list.

People aren't necessarily being coy when they are unable to distill the contents of a book into a two-paragraph internet answer to tell you everything about how to formulate nickel plating solutions and do nickel plating. Woody Allen famously made that point by saying he took a speed reading course, then read "War and Peace" in 10 minutes, and ... "it's about Russia" :-)

The "magic potions" you refer to are modern proprietary "brighteners" and "addition agents" which work better than the generic addition agents I just mentioned. They are the result of decades of research, and companies aren't trying to keep the info out of the hands of hobbyists who can't do synthesis from precursors anyway, but from their competitors who can. Hobbyists can use generic brighteners or they can buy proprietary brighteners -- but they can't make proprietary brighteners because they're not mixtures; "synthesis from precursors" -- is like making gasoline from crude oil. So it's best to buy the proprietary plating solutions, but you can certainly electroplate nickel without them, either using the older addition agents I mentioned if you wish, or by plating it with the Watts nickel bath and no addition agents, and just polishing/buffing it to a shine.

The principles of electroplating are very easy -- we have a FAQ "How Plating Works" that thousands of students have used to learn how to zinc or copper plate small items as a science project in just a few minutes. But practical plating is harder to do, and nickel plating your parts crudely will accelerate corrosion rather than retarding it, as seen on the fender of this 3 month old bicycle . . .

That's because nickel is a barrier layer plating of a more noble metal. Just as zinc anodes on boats corrode away to protect the steel hull, your steel parts will corrode away to try to protect the nickel plating if there are any tiny pinholes or any porosity. That causes the steel to rust bloom and pit in an effort to cathodically protect the nickel as you see in the pic. So, even though you are not concerned about looks, you do need full coverage and complete freedom from porosity.

Skill, knowledge, and experience are all very helpful in getting the best results, and are obtainable by practicing on scrap and learning! But ruining important parts, thinking plating isn't hard, not so much. Good luck!

This is in response to a couple of Mr Wallace's comments.

1. Nickel is quite safe, unless you happen to be one of those that is allergic to it.

2. pH control was not mentioned. It only works well in a given range and is uglier than sin outside of that.

3. A brightener is necessary to get the bright "steel" look. without it, you get a matte tan.

4. It will take a huge bank of lights to get his 12 volts down to the 1.5 volts that he needs for a small amount of parts.

5. You are wrong, most of us that are or were platers, do not want the business. The history is massive bitching about the price because all we do is "dip it" in a couple of tanks. Also, while he will accept nearly anything for his own output, he very probably will not be that forgiving if a plater does it and it has a contact spot where he did not want one.

6. My experience is bad. Some home plater dumped his tank and it spiked the sewer system to nearly out of limits. I got to spend a day (unpaid) defending my operation and basically doing a mass balance accounting for all of my nickel. What do you think that my feelings are about "home" platers.

7. Platers are limited to an effluent of less than 1 microgram on nickel per liter of waste water. Your formula is about 1000 grams of nickel as metal, so is about 1 million milligrams of nickel. He probably will dump it because it is very expensive to get rid of it. If a plater had this much go to effluent, it would be over a quarter of a million gallons of effluent or a massive fine if caught.

8. Do you really think that most people will spend the $250.00 to have the treated waste tested for compliance? Or the $300 or so dollars to have the gal or so of residue sent off to the mandatory certified land fill?

With all due respect, I do not know the gentleman from England, so "He" refers to noncomplying home platers in general and not specifically him.

Hi, Michael. Evaporation for recovery of plating chemicals is fine, and widely practiced, but you need to "run the numbers" for the particular case. It is necessary to dilute the plating solution that is dragged out by about 1000:1 for successful rinsing, and that might be a lot of water.

You can evaporate rinse water in lieu of more complicated treatment, just as you can dig a hole for a concrete foundation with a garden tool instead of earthmoving equipment; but it might be practical for a dog house and not for a skyscraper. Thanks and good luck.

Hi, Robert. You're welcome to hold a low opinion of this site. You want to follow a nickel plating recipe like a cake recipe, and the reason it doesn't work is you have a lifetime of general familiarity with food preparation but none with electroplating. Example: if a cake recipe says "add two eggs", you wouldn't smash unbroken eggs into the batter -- you know that the recipe implies a whole protocol of buying fresh eggs, keeping them refrigerated and recognizing if they've gone rotten, cracking them but not getting any shell into the batter, etc.; the recipe I gave you says the nickel bath needs 30-45 g/l of boric acid, but will you simply throw that much into the tank and cause plating problems? I can tell you the proper methodology, but as I tell you to put the boric acid into a spare anode bag, you're confronted yet again with what constitutes the kind of anode bag we are implying, etc. Everything can be explained in complete detail but it takes time & pages when starting from nothing, not a couple of paragraphs. Why do you think plating books exist if 2 paragraphs can replace 200 pages? Why do you think plating managers & foremen earn good money if what they know can be picked up in 10 minutes?

We told you which book to borrow from the library at zero cost to answer every question that was raised, including what generic brighteners, levelers, and wetting agents you can use if unwilling to buy a brand-name plating solution! You can attend monthly meetings of the American Electroplaters and Surface Finishers Society (www.nasf.org) in any area of the USA or Canada at zero cost and without being a member. You can view the 60,000+ pages of this site at zero cost, and we and our readers are happy to answer any and all questions cheerfully.

We have an FAQ that explains to elementary school children how to safely do zinc or copper electroplating for a science project. But we are simply unable to tell an untrained person how to graduate to industrial quality nickel plating in a couple of paragraphs. Meanwhile some of them steadfastly refuse to pick up the books we suggest from the library, and refuse to try to learn any background basics like the nomenclature of chemistry :-)

And all the while, no matter how much time and effort we spend at it, the same people insult us left & right that we're working to keep this stuff secret so we can rip them off. Geez.

Hi, John. Thousands of school children around the world have learned how to do electroplating from our FAQ: How Electroplating Works. It includes how to do zinc plating and copper plating for a science project in tutorial fashion.

Our FAQ: Introduction to Chrome Plating is read by thousands of people every week and has been reprinted in several auto enthusiast magazines and on countless websites.

Virtually every conceivable question about plating in answered in exhaustive detail within the 60,000+ threads of this website.

But when you want to jump from grammar school science-project plating to useful, robust, bright, corrosion resistant, exterior, industry-ready finishes, and you want it all in one continuous cogent tutorial, it's not a matter of just reading 2 or 3 paragraphs.

Maybe you should look inside yourself as to why "book" and "library" provoke such hostility & rage?

Regards,

GO Ted! & Right on man, Tourists who think "just go!" Are Wak, Everything you posted is Clear..> DO YOUR RESEARCH ! the responsibility of craft is in the background info & so, until then , Go... First and foremost,Ted~ best & Clear.:>

P.s *Grasshopper ask'd the Master, What is the sound of "One Hand Clapping"? ~ Master delivers a Open Handed "Slap" to the inquiring cheek. Right ! However Ted you are a genteel human,Good work & thanX, {Neva late when you wish to plate} Marcos.

Hello, Gene. Thanks.

Our FAQ gets school kids electroplating in 10 minutes or less; and yes, plating jewelry is dead easy as well.

But when antique auto enthusiasts like Martin bring you their corroded diecastings to replate, you'll find that a bench jeweler will achieve nothing with them except to destroy them. Such parts teach a lesson in humility to world-class electroplaters :-)

Please prove us wrong! Simply take one corroded old diecast car emblem and share with us how you did. My bet is after you've been completely unsuccessful after weeks of trying, you'll start to realize that plating diecastings and 'raw' metal is a very different thing than what you are familiar with.

Regards,

So wherein is your difficulty then, Jc? The chemical formulation for nickel plating baths is already printed twice just on this one page, and we've already told you to try coumarin, formaldehyde, saccharin and sodium lauryl sulphate as your addition agents if you are unwilling to buy the packaged nickel plating solutions with modern proprietary addition agents which are impractical for an amateur to formulate.

But if you want to try your hand at synthesizing brighteners from precursors anyway, see thread 305 which tells you where to buy propane sulftone, 1-(2-Hydroxy-3-sulfopropyl)-pyridinium betaine, and N-benzylniacin.

We've already written FAQs for you explaining How Electroplating Works and an Introduction to Chrome Plating. We've answered thousands of questions about nickel plating in exhaustive detail on these pages, and provided a search engine so you can find those answers. Ask any detailed question and we'll answer it.

But the idea that books are unavailable in KZN is beyond ridiculous! From here in New Jersey, USA, I found a dozen plating books listed in one of your libraries in less than two minutes! I'm beginning to think that the reason some of the younger generation prefer public forums to books is that social media has trained them to not have the patience to quietly apply themselves even for 5 minutes without demanding that their bitching be heard, and the books won't listen :-)

Regards,

Hi, George. I don't think nickel plating is the answer for many reasons including the fact that it requires electricity, which you say you won't have. Please look into "tinning". This has been a rural trade for a hundred years, and thus sounds well suited to your needs. You can search this site for "retinning of pots" to get started. Best of luck.

Regards,

Thanks Ted. I am now looking at tinning option.

Also, somebody suggested to me to look at teflon coating if temperature is below 200 °C.

Regards
George

A. One of the Turkish kids in my village asked what a Watts bath is and could I make one. Having given up with his chemistry teacher he thought he would try a retired miserable lawyer for the answer! First of all BUY A GOOD PAIR OF GOGGLES AND A PAIR OF RUBBER GLOVES AND WEAR THEM AT ALL TIMES DURING THE FOLLOWING PROCEDURE.

I used the formula of 1 kg Nickel Sulphate, 220 g Nickel Chloride and 160 g of Boric Acid added to 4.5 liters of deionized water to make a Watts Bath. After mixing the chemicals together I added some nickel brighteners available from eBay plus a couple of saccharine tablets from Hot Lips Hasan, our local chemist come plumber. I tipped this lot into a large glass tank, added an cheap fish tank heater set at 34 °C and an cheap fish tank pump/filter. Using pure Nickel ingots (from eBay UK) and a 5 volt power supply capable of 100 ma per inch we were ready to go.

I had been meaning to plate some old steel Train model rail track for years so decided this was the time. I immersed the track in a weak hydrochloric acid solution to clean it as much as possible and then washed the track with a strong solution of wash-up liquid finally running the track under the clean water tap. After cleaning and drying the article you want to plate don't touch it with bare hands or let any mucky Turkish schoolboy anywhere near it, use your Marigolds (rubber gloves) or better still suspend the item from the copper wire you will be using in the plating bath. To save space here go to google and type in Nickel Plating to find out how to connect everything up to the 5 v supply. I suspended the Nickel ingots from titanium wire although I am sure something much less exotic would suffice. The track was suspended in the bath in a copper wire basket which was easy to construct from household solid power supply cable, Plating time varied so it's best to practice on waste items first until you are happy with the result.

The Eurostar and SNCF TGV not to mention the Flying Scotsman has been running fine around my garden on nicely plated rust free track for months now!
Hope this helps and please be patient with your plating and also with those running this site as they are only trying to help.

Very happy to hear of your success, Paul. Thank you greatly for taking the time to share the info!

Regards,

A. Most people will not like the product they get from a garage shop home plating, unless they have a complete kit and good guidance.
Proper cleaning and activation are just as important as the plating step. Hard material needs to have a bake cycle after plating.

Legal disposal of the solutions is extremely expensive. An EPA violation typically starts at $500 per violation.
Why not find a shop that will take it as a filler job. It will be cheaper in the long run.

A. Hi Bob. Beautiful crafts room.

Sorry, I've never heard of your nickel plating solution. The most typical process is Watt's Nickel, which I described in my first response on this topic. You may be able to do without any brighteners since you may be content to buff the nickel to brightness yourself. Just remember that nickel plating will accelerate the rusting of steel if there is porosity or pinholes, so watch for pinholes and plate thick enough that there is no porosity.

If you are sandblasting the parts, and you do the nickel plating immediately after the blasting, there should be no further need for cleaning or pickling. Try going immediately from sandblasting to nickel plating. Good luck.

Regards,

Thanks Ted for your response. The reference book I am using is called "Hobbyist electroplating made easy". It lists 3 different Watt's baths plus 3 others in the same text. A couple of pages further on it says that if you are plating directly on steel this formula will work great.
Nickel sulphate, ammonium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, boric acid, 100-130 °F, .1 amp per sq inch cathode and 2.5-4 volt. I've already purchased all these ingredients, so I'm going to give this bath a try. I'll let you know how it goes. This is my first shot at plating myself. I have always paid for the service. After this I may be back paying.

A. Hi again. Nickel anodes are necessary. Larger platers use nickel "S-rounds" in titanium baskets, but you could probably get away with wiring S-rounds with titanium wire if you can't find small titanium baskets.

Regards,

A. Hi. The nickel strip might be just fine for hobby plating; it's just not as ideal as S-rounds in a titanium basket or strung together with titanium wire. S-rounds are sulfurized nickel; the sulfur helps the anode dissolve faster. Without it, what happens is replacement nickel from the anodes doesn't dissolve into the plating solution as fast as the nickel plates out, so the plating solution gradually gets weaker. In a high production plating shop where thousands of pounds of parts are plated every day, and where the nickel plating bath must go years without dumping, it is very important that the nickel content remain constant by the anodes dissolving just right. You might never have a problem worth worrying about just using your nickel strip.

But for the S-rounds , google for "hobby plating".

Regards,

A. Hi. If your part is 3"x3" and two-sided, the surface area is about 18 square inches, so 1.8 Amps is about 14.5 ASF; that sounds like a good current density. It's about 1/3 of what's used in industry, but it's a good number when you lack filtration and air agitation. But it means you have to plate 3x as long as industrial platers do, and they would probably plate for a 1/2 hour. So you could plate for 6 times as long (6x as thick) before anyone might think it excessive.

Yes, you should plate immediately after sand blasting, but then it shouldn't be necessary to wash it, but doesn't hurt.

Regards,

And, how does this forum work? It seems to take days for my posts to appear but is responded to within one day, sometimes the same day. I love the site, just curious.

A. Hi Bob. Most materials other than titanium will be attacked by the plating solution or will dissolve into it.

Glad you like the forum. Thanks for the kind words!

Regards,

A. Hi. The blue-green crystals/solids are indeed nickel salts. They are more soluble at 140 °F than at room temperature, so this settling out is not a shock. But you probably have more nickel in solution than you need if the solution is this saturated. Glad to hear you are enjoying success.

Regards,