"All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers.
For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall.
Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must be the life of those who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep.
By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Well that one hits close to home... :( I guess a childhood of near-poverty will warp one's perspective on the importance of busting one's balls to gather as many marbles as possible.
I decided to nickel plate a pair of pliers that I'd recently cleaned up in the sand blast cabinet. This pair, before and after sand blasting.
Below: I had such big plans for these cleaned-up channel locks...
That's not going to happen, and I'll explain why a bit later in the post, below. But first, an introduction to nickel electroplating...
To electroplate something, you have to submerge it completely in plating solution, and then apply an electric current to make the metal ions (gold, copper, brass, nickel) deposit on your item.
The nickel electroplating solution that you purchase online is *expensive*. This 8 ounce (227 cc) bottle costs $30. That's $3.75/ounce. I'm not nickel plating a beat up old tool with anything that expensive!
A little research revealed that this solution is easy to make for yourself, providing you have the necessary reagents and a DC power supply.
Here's the unusual reagent: Nickel strips, for $5. I ordered two packages of them.
Here are the other two reagents, which can be purchased in any grocery store: White vinegar and non-iodized salt. I cut down a 5 gallon (19 liter) paint bucket so that I could work with the solution without having to reach way down inside.
When the process is completed, I'll have made one gallon (128 ounces - 3.8 liters) of nickel plating solution for under $20. I figured that it would be best to store the solution in the vinegar jug once it's made, so I used the entire gallon of vinegar. After pouring the vinegar into the bucket, it's a good idea to add a couple of teaspoons of salt to make the vinegar more electrically conductive. This added electrical conductivity will greatly speed up the chemical process of turning vinegar into nickel plating solution.
Safety notes for anyone who decides to try this: The nickel plating solution is carcinogenic. The process of making the solution also generates hydrogen gas. Use gloves when handling the liquid, and use ventilation while making the solution.
Once the vinegar has been salted, dip two nickel strips into the vinegar, and connect one of them to the positive, and the other to the negative terminal of your DC power supply. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, so I started out with very low voltage, just a couple of strips, and kept the electrodes spread far apart from one another. As I realized how slow this process is, the arrangement and electrical conditions changed quite a bit. Much of this post is about what I did to speed up creating the nickel plating solution.
Below is the initial set-up.
Note: You don't need a fancy adjustable power supply like the one below! Any DC power supply that can put out 6-12 volts will work to make nickel electroplating solution - a car battery charger would certainly work. You just won't have as much control over the speed of the process. A decent multimeter should be able to provide you with voltage and current values.
Below: The power supply. We are looking at the left two digital displays. It's showing 0.02 Amps, or 20 milliamps, at 3 volts. It's not pushing much current, and also not accomplishing much in the bucket.
Below: I cranked up the voltage from 3 to 25, which increased current flow to 180 milliamps. Getting a little activity, but the electrodes were too far apart for good current flow or much of a reaction.
Below: I started fanning out several nickel strips from the alligator clips, to increase the surface area for the chemical reaction to take place.
The Cathode (negative) bubbles with hydrogen gas, while the Anode (positive) slowly disintegrates. The anode doesn't actually disintegrate, so much as the nickel ions are slowly (oh so slowly) stripped away by the electric current, and then chemically react with the vinegar. Vinegar is 5-20% Acetic acid, and the nickel plating solution that we are making contains dissolved green-ish Nickel (II) Acetate.
Below: A hint of green under the Anode?
Below: A couple of hours in. Do we see a greenish tint developing? Yes we do! Also note the chunks of partially dissolved nickel under the anode.
Below: As I realized how slowly this process worked and became a bit more comfortable with it, I began trying different things to increase current flow, because electrical current is what determines the speed of stripping the nickel ions off the strips and into solution.
I placed the electrodes closer together to increase current flow. More nickel junk at the bottom, but we are starting to get some darker liquid!
At some point, I decided to double up on the anodes and cathodes, again to increase current to move the process along. There is now plenty of junk in the bottom. I'll filter the solution when I'm finished dissolving the nickel anodes.
Below: Fresh anode strips, and old ones that are spent.
Below: I have now set the power supply to limit current to 2 amps (2000 milliamps). The voltage will adjust as necessary to keep the current at or below 2 amps. The red "CC" LED indicates the power supply is in current-limiting mode.
Below: The two center electrodes are the anodes - they are dissolving. The outside cathodes are creating hydrogen bubbles. We are almost to the mouthwash color that we are looking for. This process took an entire day, although if I'd started out pushing 2-3 amps at the beginning and using dual electrodes close together, it might have only taken half a day.
I haven't finished dissolving all the nickel into the vinegar solution yet, but I thought that maybe the solution was strong enough to dip a bit of metal into for fun. The pliers I only put in briefly, because they have a lot of surface area, and it's taken a long time to get the solution this strong. I didn't really want to waste too many of those precious nickel ions on a cheap tool, so it was a quick dip. Still, they look much better.
For a higher quality test with a smaller item, I used a rusty old 16 penny nail.
I ran it on the bench-top wire wheel to remove the corrosion and expose the steel.
I connected the nail to the cathode (negative) to allow the nickel to plate, while leaving the (dissolving) nickel anodes in place, still connected to positive. I held it at 2 amps of current flow for 2 minutes, while the nail bubbled hydrogen gas off and collected nickel. Then I polished it briefly. Not too bad looking! Nickel is not as hard as chrome - it's similar to iron as far as scratch resistance and hardness. But it's also not soft, like aluminum, copper, silver, or magnesium. If the nickel coin in your pocket seems soft, that's the 75% copper in the alloy.
I'm hoping that by keeping a nickel anode in the solution while plating an item, any nickel lost out of the solution will be replaced by fresh ions from the anode - so once created, the solution should not lose strength over time.
Also check out the nickel *cathodes*. They are accumulating nickel crystals from the nickel plating solution! The nickel cathodes are being nickel plated, hahaha. At some point I will reverse the polarity and dissolve these as well.
UPDATE: First, second and third attempts at plating something to a high finish.
No comments:
Post a Comment