Nickel plating...?

[DocsMachine]

Who out there does the same kind of matte nickel plating that Palmer's used to do?

Or, perhaps more accurately, can anyone recommend a plating shop that can do nickel (electro or electroless) on onesey-twosey parts, without charging an arm, three legs and a bucket of kidneys? The plating shop I usually deal with can to some top-class nickel, but only in batches- I'd need to send in 100+ parts to justify the cost.

Doc.

[XEMON]

Curious too ...

Ive done a few with limited results, i should have the infrastructure to resume experiment again in the next year

[Chuck E Ducky]

JeeperCreeper you still plating?

[Pewpewpew]

I’d love to know as well, I’ve got some brass coming and will need some parts so I can tear it up and find someone to fix it when I give up. Plating would be nice, see how it is when it arrives and I might just hit the meth pipe and let shit get weird with the brasso.

[DocsMachine]

Many years ago, I used electroless kits from Caswell, and got generally good results. Steel was easy- the electroless solution "auto catalyzes" on steel, so plating is straightforward.

Brass, not so much. The brass had to be perfectly clean- no oils, no waxes, no fingerprints, no buffer residue, and you had to go pretty much right from sanitizing it to the plating bath. You also had to have some steel/iron in contact with the brass to start the reaction, but then remove it before the plating got too think, or you' end up with marks where the contact was. I did this a jillion years ago, using that sort of setup:



(The grip frame I had done locally by a now-long-closed chrome shop who, even back then, had stopped giving a crap, and ruined more parts than I care to think about.)

The trick is the bath has to be in a non-metal, non-enameled tub, and near boiling- about 180-200F as I recall. I used a hotplate and Pyrex type baking trays (like you'd make a lasagna or a meatloaf in) so it IS possible to do it at home.

But at the moment, rather than investing in the materials and time for maybe one or two projects, I'd rather find a reputable shop to do the plating. I can do the beadblasting or texturing.

Doc.