plating
 

Does anyone have any experience using CASWELL's nickel/chrome plating kits?

Re: plating
 

Try doing a search here and on the EV8 forum, I know it's been discussed in the past.
Paul in CT

Re: plating
 

Thanks Paul, I should have done that 1st.

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curious too, I emailed them today about their copy-cad kit. I would like to do some carbs.

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I've used Caswell's copycad & the nickel kit.
It consumed quite a bit of time and some carefull study before I got any consistant results but if you have the patience I'd say go for it on both these kits.
I won't be trying chrome. It seems to me the process produces deadly fumes so your setup is more involved & costs are higher.
So if you have a fair bit of patience and want the convenience of plating a 5 or 6 items here & there as time allows.... this might be your thing.
I must admit it was kinda fun...like doing a science experiment!
On the other hand, if you can have everything ready in 1 or 2 batches and you value your time any higher than say about $8/hr .....I'd say send it out to a reputable shop.
In the long run it'll probably be cheaper.
By the way, Don Turley was selling some super nice plated items over in the swap section of this forum last time I looked...worth checking out.

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There is a high end restoration shop a few miles from here that does concours type stuff. They use their kits for small and small quanity parts. They told me on a tour of the facility that it took some time to get it right by recording temps of the metal and temps of the soultions and temp of the air. They have a book they developed over time so they plug in the numbers and see the volatge and duration needed.

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Thanks for sharing first hand experience. Did you buy the rectifier from them and what amperage?

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Craig,
I think you have the touch, looks real nice!

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I tried several power supplies from plug-in wall adapters to batteries. In the end my best results have been from an old battery charger with a reostat to control the amperage.
After burning up a couple wire-wound reostats(they're hard to find) ....I finally just stretched out a coil spring and wired it in series with the whole mess. I move the aligator clip up and down the spring till the battery charger reads my correct amperage. The spring still gets hot...just like the reostat...but so far it seems like the answer.
Idealy you want to find a variarc as the ultimate power supply...but I haven't got that lucky yet.

One last thing ... you'll also need to setup a copper tank if you do nickel. Copper is your filler and primer.
Copper plating requires a seperate list of materials, all which I purchased seperately.
The Caswell big yellow manual includes basic copper instructions. You definately need that manual and one should keep some notes regarding time & amperage in order to get consistant results.
I hope this helps.

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Craig,

Is that wire in the second picture glowing? This looks interesting, are the parts fairly readily available?

Mike

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Yes.
Yes.

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Craig, thanks for the good info., I've been reading previous threads and can tell you've been at this for awhile. Have you tried the small electro-plating system, the one w/the brush that you have to keep dipping in solution? I also need to have the rad. shell & rear bumpers plated, I was planning on taking these parts to a commercial shop. Can anyone give me a "ballpark" est. on cost? I was going to have the rad. shell nickel plated, and the bumpers chrome plated. Would it be cheaper to just buy these parts new?

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I haven't tried the brush plating but that would be handy for nickel plating of the w/shield slider arm studs.

Really I haven't as much experiance as you might think with plating and what you see are all parts of my coupe which I'm learning on. Some of the pieces you see have been stripped and replated 4 or 5 times before I got it to the colour/finish that looked right.
I probably had a week of experiance total, setting up and plating a few parts.
I must say the replating experiance gave me an abundantly clear understanding of why good plating costs what it does :)

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Brush plating is not that good for nickel. The nickel will pasivate quickly and then as you build up the layer, it will flake off. Brush plating is excellent for cad though, I spent many long hours brush plating cad on F-111 airframes when in the RAAF. One thing to be careful of is wearing a hole in the absorbant sock that covers the anode, this is the bit that holds the solution. If a hole develops, you will arc a hole into your work piece. On D6A-C steel that F-111 airframes were made of, this was something to make sure that you did not do.

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Yes, they would be cheaper in cost and quality if bought new.

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Give Bert's in Denver a call. They had replated original parts for sale the last I knew. 800-321-1931

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Thanks Tom, I'll do that.