How long Gold Plating over brass will last? Will the zinc discolor plating?

"Gold & Platinum Jewelry Buying Guide"
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A. Hi, Sunny. I think you have been advised correctly. The gold and brass do slowly diffuse together if there is not a barrier layer of nickel between them. While this may not be a major problem at room temperature with thick gold plating, it may be with half micron thick plating.

Regards,

A. Hello,

In fact, a barrier layer shall be added between brass and gold.

Onto house-goods, we put a 5 microns bright nickel layer to avoid the problem of Copper diffusion into gold layer.

But, considering the new politics concerning "nickel-free processes" for jewelry, we have replaced the nickel barrier by a white bronze layer (5 microns) for the parts in permanent contact with skin.

Hope it can help you.

A. Hi,

You can always plate on top of Bronze, I think you have some problem with the chemistry of White bronze.

A. Hi Katie.

Neither white gold nor rhodium will turn your finger green, but brass will. So if the plating is good and heavy and free of porosity you will be okay until it wears thin.

Regards,

A. Hi cousin Sara. Unfortunately it is difficult to tell the quality of jewelry just from a seller's claims because their intention isn't really to inform you, but to induce you to buy. Yes, 22 kt gold plated jewelry is probably non-tarnish, and it can be fine, but the thicker the gold plating the better. If they don't tell you the thickness, it's probably not very thick at all. Good quality costume jewelry should probably have about one micron of gold plating on it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hello Thelma, the gold over brass will tarnish. The brass will migrate into the gold plated layer because there is no barrier plate. For the Rhodium plated, it would depend on the thickness of the rhodium plating. Rhodium is one of the hardest finishes as plated. Depending on how often the piece is worn would be directly related to the rhodium wearing off. The rhodium finish would hold up much longer than gold over brass. Sorry it took so long to respond.

A. I have had bad luck with having my hand made brass Engineers ring professionally gold plated. I even suggested to them to nickel plate it first. They didn't and the gold plating wore off in a matter of months. Definitely nickel plate first. Good luck.

A. Hi Oi. As noted earlier, trying to judge the longevity of a finish from the vendor's sales pap is nearly hopeless but I'll pick whatever is behind door "2" Door 1: 0.03 mil is .76 microns, which is probably reasonable today for costume jewelry. If it's a broach, it will probably last quite a long time; but if it's a ring, it probably won't last long (rings get a huge amount of wear).

Although you don't know the thickness of the gold plating on the sterling silver item, so it is impossible to predict it's longevity, the simple fact that it's made of sterling silver rather than brass, so is more costly, is a good indication that it's probably higher quality. :-)

Luck & Regards,

A. Hi Koby. As long as it remains "spent", nickel plating followed by gold plating sounds fine. Just don't try to fire it.

Regards,

A. Hi Jack. Some would say to plate it with cobalt, but others suspect that cobalt is so similar to nickel that it's likely to have similar, just less publicized, issues. So white bronze plating is probably the best answer. There are several proprietary brands of white bronze plating processes available.

Regards,

A. Hi Gale. I'm no ammunition/firearms expert and I can't comment on potential safety issues with dimensional clearances, friction, cold welding in the barrel or clip, embrittlement of the casing and possibility of explosion, etc. I'm simply saying that gunpowder-charged bullets are lethal, precision engineered & carefully tested devices -- and I'd be very careful of willy-nilly alterations, especially amateur attempts at activating & electroplating because amateurs, almost by definition, often do a poor job and often don't understand all of the consequences of things.

Regards,

A. Gold plating brass is no problem and you definitely need a nickel undercoat.
Some brass cases come already nickel plated and there is a problem. Nickel passivates and has to be activated before it can be plated or adhesion will be very poor. It is much simpler to start with brass cases and nickel plate immediately with gold. This means nickel plate, rinse, gold plate not allowing the parts to dry out between.

I assume you are intending to plate the cases not the heads unless you are looking for low cost vampire ammo.

A. Hi Edward. Even if you know exactly what you've got, a perfect cosmetic repair is difficult. In this case I suspect, but don't know, that the lock had a thin layer of gold electroplating followed by some sort of clear lacquer. These finishes are usually mass-produced, with hundreds of parts simultaneously processed. I think the labor cost of re-plating and re-lacquering a single piece will be prohibitive, and that you will find it impractical to do in situ anyway.

Regards,