Nickel Plating

[Gray Fox]

Hi there

Was wondering if anyone has had any experience with nickel plating for Stainless steel.

Does it work?

are special chemicals needed in order to plate S. Steel

I've been told by my gunsmith that plating SS is diffrent from blued steel...

Any comments are greatly appreiciated

 

[CeeZer]

Nickel is evil to guns, full stop.

 

[agit-prop]

You need to "pickle" it first using a hot acid bath to strip some of the chrome from the surface. After that you need to strike plate it first using different chemicals than those normally used to plate regular steel. Once that's done, it needs to be pickled using a different bath and then you can proceed with nickel plating.

If I was in the plating biz, I would probably avoid it altogether.

 

[sunray]

Why would you want to plate SS with anything? Especially with Ni. Ni wears off.
If you just want a high shine on your firearm, polish it.

 

[guntech]

Electrolysis nickel plating is the only kind I would have done on a firearm... never Electro plating... but as stated why do it on a stainless gun?

 

[rtaylor1956]

you would need to copper plate the parts first before the nickel plate them but this would be pointless on stainless steel, why?

 

[(Ronin)]

Flash copper then the nickel..it's a bugger to do

 

[Gray Fox]

Thanks for the info.


Yeah I purchased a gun here that had a factory nickel slide but had a fugly SS frame. I thought I might try to find someone to nickel the frame for me.

Would Mirror polishing the frame give me somthing close to nickel?