Another nickel plating project

 "The things you need are few and easy to come by; but the things you imagine you need are infinite, and you will never be satisfied." - Epicurus

I've had a discarded General Electric 7F.03 compressor blade (actually a "vane", to use proper terminology) on the knick-knack shelf in the office at home forever.  Since I recently moved into an office at work, I decided to move the display piece to work, since the shelves were bare following the previous occupant moving to a different office.

The difference between a blade and a vane is that the blades are attached to the rotor, and the vanes are stationary, and are housed in a groove inside the compressor casing. I was taught early on to call them all "blades", then differentiate by adding the adjective "rotating" or "stationary" before the word "blade".

Below: The channel in the turbine casing that houses a row of "stationary blades" or vanes.

 One of the guys mentioned that It would be pretty cool to polish it up, as it was quite dark - and I had to agree with that.  Rather than just polish it, I decided to plate it with nickel, which required a bit of surface prep with a wire wheel.

Below:  A few "before" pictures of the compressor blade.  I no longer recall which stage of the compressor this came from.

 Below:  Surface oxides cleaned off with scouring powder and green scrubbing pads, then hit with a wire wheel. 

Below: In a close-up of the base, you can see the damage that caused this blade to be scrapped.  In the base, it had been chattering, and a bit of material was missing that was allowing this blade to rub and chafe against the adjacent blade.

 There was also a minor ding on the leading edge of the blade, but this was from it being tossed into a bin full of other damaged blades.

 With the surface prep as good as I was willing to invest time in it, it was time to do some plating.  This time I chose an appropriately deep container.

And we are off to the races.

After the previous nickel plating experience, I expected a consistent plate over the entire surface, but that was not the case with this larger item.  The blade only received nickel plate close to where the nickel anode was  submerged. 

As a result of this localized plating, I had to place the anode on the other side of the blade for 10 minutes, then flip the blade upside-down, and plate both sides of the bottom of the blade.  In the end it worked out pretty well.  There are some imperfections, but it was just a damaged blade to begin with.

Below:  Freshly plated and rinsed, before polishing.

Below:  Final finish.

And now I have been gifted one large compressor rotating blade, and this one is *not* going to be plated with nickel, but I will take it home and see if I can get a good polish on it.  The freshly plated stationary blade is to the right in this image.

Fun stuff!