Home Nickel or Chrome Plating

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Gasanwu

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Has anyone tried the Electroless Nickel plating kit or the Hard chrome plating kit from Caswell? I realize that Electroless Nickel plating kit is probably easier to do without breaking any seweage or environmental laws. Hard chroming has to be done with a battery and produces all kinds of nasty waste chemicals and such. Has anyone tried this before?
 
Although I have not done electroplating at home yet, I would like to buy one of these electroless nickel plating kits my self. I would definately recommend going the electroless nickel plating route versus electrolytic plating, as no applied voltage/current source is required; so one does not need to concern themselves with control of the voltage and specific current density etc, etc.

Electroless plating is an auto-catalytic chemical plating process that proceeds on it own. One must only have the correct plating bath concentration and temperature; and of course the properly prepaired substrate to be plated.
 
I've thought about using CLR to strip the bluing off my 1911 slide and frame, polish them right up and plating them while the shine is still there. Because apparently the plating is only good looking if the surface being plated is shiny to start with. I don't know if that's achievable though.
 
I've the electroless kit in the past to plate aluminum, steel, and pot metal. The key to plating is surface prep, temperature control and thorough degreasing. Remove the blue or parkerizing then polish or bead blast your parts to exactly the finish you want once the gun is plated. Any flaws in the surface prep will show up in the plated surface as well.

Here's an aluminum and pot metal airsoft gun I plated a few years ago:

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Before

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After

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An airsoft SVI, plated at home
 
More recent results with the slide from my Springfeild. I will have to lap the slide to the frame before I fire it

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More photos here: http://www.pbase.com/agitprop/nickel_plating

As I warned before, surface prep, THOROUGH degreasing, and temperature control are the keys to success if you try this.

I used the caswell kit to acheive these results.
 
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Does plating effect the thickness of the material and does this cause any problems with tolerances? Does it affect(effect?) the action?
 
Yes, it does. In this case it added .0005" to the slide and will add the same thickness to the frame. I lapped the slide and frame after I plated the slide. I haven't plated the frame yet.
 
Through the use of a very fine abrasive compound. You put it on the frame rails, install the empty slide, and work the slide back and forth a number of times.

Remember - you can take metal away easily. Putting it back is harder.
 
I have used the Caswell electroless Nickel. easy to do and agit-prop gave good advise about the metal prep. My experience was on a 1911 : it does peal off at the friction point, slide rail and frame, under the slide on the disconnector channel, breach face ect. I had a hard time to remove it. After stripping, I had the gun hard Chromed with is way better, 100 % better in surface hardness and durability. Hard Chrome will never peel off. My 2 grains of powder...
 
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