Topic: Zinc plating hardware during a rebuild

[drumstyx]

I'm almost ready to put things back together, but just as I was putting the center stand into the frame (as a first step) I realized that 1: I should really powdercoat the stands too, as the paint I used was crap, and 2: maybe I should be zinc plating this hardware before reuse.

So here's the thing...I have most hardware and parts separated into ziplock bags, labelled with where they came from, I figured this would help during assembly, and I'm sure it would, except that to get it plated, it's all gotta get mixed at the platers.

It's not so much the bolts that are difficult, but the nuts and washers -- was this a flange nut? Was this washer thick? Big? Small? Some stuff just isn't in the fiche...

Should I bother getting this stuff plated? Should I do it at home with a kit maybe? I've heard it's not as durable, and I don't have the acids they use to clean the parts first either.

[brewsky]

  and I don't have the acids they use to clean the parts first either.

The Works toilet cleaner.....20% HCL.....dip the parts in for a few seconds, or till any rust is gone, immediately rinse and dip into plating solution

https://www.walmart.com/ip/21930755?wmlspartner=wmtlabs&adid=22222222222020188821&veh=sem

[przjohn]

Replating Zinc is fairly easy. There are home brew methods on line or you can choose the Caswell Kit. I normally plate as the project moves along. The plating operation gets set up and as I work on the bike, parts are taken out of the Zip Lock Bags and plated. This keeps everything organized and when I need the parts in the bags they are freshly plated.

[drumstyx]

Alright, so I've determined I'll do it DIY -- how the heck do you suspend all the parts such that they all get covered?

[przjohn]

I use a piece of 1/2" Copper Tube across a 5 gallon bucket and the strip thermostat wire to suspend the parts.



Before pic,


After pic,



You can achieve different brightness levels using a brightener, wire wheel, or by polishing. You can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Cleaning and degreasing is key to a good job. Bead blasting the parts is the best prep method and if that is not doable a good wire wheel job can do the trick. Trisodium Phophate, (available at most any hardware store) and Distilled Water Solution heated to 200 degrees is a good degreaser. Caswell makes an excellent plating manual that you can buy or it comes with some kits. The kit will do more than a few restorations as long as you keep contaminants out of the solution. It takes me  about an hour to get everything set up and heated the first time during a restoration but after that I pretty much just walk into the shop, plug things in, and am plating in 20 minutes. For me this method works well because I can't remember what I had for lunch never mind what was what in what bag. Bets of luck to you, it ain't that hard once you get set up.

[Bootsey]

I use a piece of 1/2" Copper Tube across a 5 gallon bucket and the strip thermostat wire to suspend the parts.



Before pic,


After pic,



You can achieve different brightness levels using a brightener, wire wheel, or by polishing. You can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Cleaning and degreasing is key to a good job. Bead blasting the parts is the best prep method and if that is not doable a good wire wheel job can do the trick. Trisodium Phophate, (available at most any hardware store) and Distilled Water Solution heated to 200 degrees is a good degreaser. Caswell makes an excellent plating manual that you can buy or it comes with some kits. The kit will do more than a few restorations as long as you keep contaminants out of the solution. It takes me  about an hour to get everything set up and heated the first time during a restoration but after that I pretty much just walk into the shop, plug things in, and am plating in 20 minutes. For me this method works well because I can't remember what I had for lunch never mind what was what in what bag. Bets of luck to you, it ain't that hard once you get set up.

What have you found to be the easiest method of carding off the dull zinc deposit left by the plating process?
Or what's your process to achieve the polished finish post plating?

[FunJimmy]

That's most impressive John.

[przjohn]

You can use the Caswell brightener but I have found that works best on parts that have no rust pitting and a smooth surface. Most parts I run on a wire wheel after plating. They come out looking nice and bright like a new store bought bolt or nut. You can also polish them on a wheel with a Tripoli compound and get almost a Chrome look. The Zinc will oxidize eventually depending on conditions but I have bikes going back 7 or 8 years now that the plated parts that were wire wheeled look fine.

Here are the parts as they came out of the plating tank. The pic above is after a quick brush on the wire wheel. You can see in the pic that the Caswell brightener was used by the bright finish on some of Copper wire that is nice and smooth but the parts are more porus due wear.

[drumstyx]

So I've found its a very slow process, but at least it's effective. I can do a few bolts and/or nuts/washers at a time, and then after a day or two or plating, I throw them in the tumbler for a nice bright finish. Even if it costs me more in time than professional plating, I prefer this to the potential of losing parts and having to sort out every nut and bolt.

[lash]

What do you have in the tumbler?

[drumstyx]

Just the corncob media I got with the Lyman kit. I used to be into reloading, and I've found a lot of the equipment is useful for restoring bikes.

Parts come out more or less clean and bright, sometimes need a light steel wool brushing to get some dark spots.

The best is the bolts, since hand finishing those would be horrible...everything comes out of the plating very dull, but clean.

I do run it overnight though, so it's not a quick process

[drumstyx]

You can use the Caswell brightener but I have found that works best on parts that have no rust pitting and a smooth surface. Most parts I run on a wire wheel after plating. They come out looking nice and bright like a new store bought bolt or nut. You can also polish them on a wheel with a Tripoli compound and get almost a Chrome look. The Zinc will oxidize eventually depending on conditions but I have bikes going back 7 or 8 years now that the plated parts that were wire wheeled look fine.

Here are the parts as they came out of the plating tank. The pic above is after a quick brush on the wire wheel. You can see in the pic that the Caswell brightener was used by the bright finish on some of Copper wire that is nice and smooth but the parts are more porus due wear.

How long do you plate for? What voltage/amperage?

I've been doing about 15-30 mins at 6v on trickle charge mode (haven't checked the amperage). Bubbling gets much more violent when I up it to 15amps, but while it works much faster, it tends to blacken the part around where the copper touches it. Easily removed with wire wheel or steel wool, but the tumbler doesn't get rid of it.

[przjohn]

I have an old power supply and the meters don't work anymore. I think it use to put out 12 volts and maybe a couple of amps before the meters STB. The parts usually take 30-45 minutes depending on whether I am going to give them a Yellow Cad dip. You can get the Yellow, Blue and others off the Caswell site. The dip only takes a minute or 2 but you get that nice Yellow factory finish on stuff like carb linkages and stuff. I like your idea about the tumbler. I think that is my next purchase for the shop.

[brewsky]

For small stuff, a few at a time, this budget setup works fine...

[drumstyx]

:O Is that just 3 volts of alkaline batteries? I happened to have an old school (non-smart) automotive charger hanging around that my dad gave me, gets the job done at 6v.

Did you guys use vinegar or just water?

[brewsky]

Yea, just 3v works fine for small batches..... I"ll have to look up my formula, but best I remember it is epsom salts, sugar and vinegar.....
10-20 minutes or so per coat

[Bootsey]

You can use the Caswell brightener but I have found that works best on parts that have no rust pitting and a smooth surface. Most parts I run on a wire wheel after plating. They come out looking nice and bright like a new store bought bolt or nut. You can also polish them on a wheel with a Tripoli compound and get almost a Chrome look. The Zinc will oxidize eventually depending on conditions but I have bikes going back 7 or 8 years now that the plated parts that were wire wheeled look fine.

Here are the parts as they came out of the plating tank. The pic above is after a quick brush on the wire wheel. You can see in the pic that the Caswell brightener was used by the bright finish on some of Copper wire that is nice and smooth but the parts are more porus due wear.

Thanks very much for the reply, and that's some impressive results! What type of wire wheel - mild steel, stainless, brass?
I found anything other than brass wire seems to damage the finish, but maybe that's an indication I'm not getting as quality a plate.

[Bootsey]

I've been going off this great write up here & had decent results: http://www.southsandia.com/forum/website/zincplating.html

I've scaled down the ingredients to suit 1 L of electrolyte for the small parts I'm plating & am using an old mobile phone charger (5V, 350mA). I did wire a variable resistor inline for a while, which worked great to adjust the current. It seems to work best when everything is adjusted so that just a minor curtain of bubbles comes off the parts.
The electrolyte does seem to lose its balance after a while, I guess as more zinc becomes suspended in the mix, so I find I eventually have to turf it and mix a new batch - which is easier with just 1 Litre.
The most time consuming part I've found is carding of the dull deposit post plating, but brass wire wheels on a dremel work well (finding ones that don't fling wire everywhere is the challenge) followed by a quick polish.

[drumstyx]

Did you wire wheel pre-plating?

It seems no matter what mix or method you use, there's always that dull coating -- some sort of zinc oxide I guess -- that you have to remove. As such, measuring things out seems rather unnecessary; buncha vinegar, some water, some epsom salts, bit of sugar, whatever low DC voltage you can find, and some zinc.

I have found preparation to be key though, the coating came off the rear axle as I was wire wheeling, but only on the shaft, where there would have been anti-seize/lubricant applied for many years, so it really needed a more thorough degreasing and wire wheeling. I decided to just let it flake off, since I only cared about the head, as the rest would be covered in anti-seize for its entire life, not to mention that it actually increased the dimensions to the point it wouldn't fit in the bearing anyway.

[pjlogue]

What type of wire wheel do you use that doesn't wear the Zinc right off?  Any parts that I have cleaned with a wire wheel that had Zinc on them, the Zinc is removed very quickly.   

I have Nickel plated a lot of my small pieces and then put them on the buffing wheel for a great polish.  (parts cleaned then the steel is polished, plated then polished again) I priced getting my parts re-chromed and almost fell over when the guy gave me an estimate, hence the Nickel plate route. 

-P.

[przjohn]

I use a fine regular wire wheel, nothing special. You just have to hit it lightly on the wheel, no need to hit it hard. If the plating strips off bolts, particularly on unthreaded shafts I believe you have not degreased properly or your solution is contaminated. The Caswell instructions emphasize the importance of using distilled water and degreasing with, of course, their powder and hot water. I have been using Trisodium Phosphate with distilled water at 200 degrees in a porcelain pot with no troubles. The Caswell instructions also emphasize not using metal containers for degreasing that are not lined. Per the instructions I also spray rinse with distilled water the parts after degrease and after finished plating.

[pjlogue]

Thanks for the info.  I was using a coarse steel wire wheel. 

Yes, the key for good plating is having the parts clean.  I found the vapor blasting does an excellent job of cleaning parts.  If the parts are pre-cleaned to remove heavy grease/oil the blasting will remove rust, scale and any oils that may be left.  I still use hot Acetone as a final wipe down before plating. 
-P.

[NobleHops]

I've been reading this thread with great interest, as John's results plating are a lot better than mine ever were. I have a Caswell kit but never got a handle on the variables, and my kit's instructions said nothing about the subtleties of it as John's evidently did.

Recently I found a local plater that is perfectly happy to run teeny batches for something like $20, and so I have been using him and the bottom line is what has already been said: Like any coating process, the key is the prep. I have also used the wire wheel and other hand cleaning methods, but more recently I have also been experimenting with the vapor blaster with great results. Net, if the part has a nice even smooth surface when you send it for plating, you will get a nice result. If it's scaly and rough and cruddy, that's what you get back, only shinier :-).

[754]

John , is that a Harley drum brake sleeve in the pics..sure looks like it.
Drumstyx... Get a large piece of cardboard, spread the parts out, label and draw a box around each bunch with description, then photograph..