Anyone else copper plating?

[lavenatti]

All of the grooves are still well defined and sharp. Lots of reading online says that it is hard to get the tight angles to fill in properly, but I think I am doing alright.

You should be able to fix this with a little thiourea in the solution. Try a teaspoon of Tarn-X to a gallon of your plating solution. Thiourea is supposed to help the copper go to the thinner plated areas and help the copper coating stay an even thickness.

[#40Fan]

You should be able to fix this with a little thiourea in the solution. Try a teaspoon of Tarn-X to a gallon of your plating solution. Thiourea is supposed to help the copper go to the thinner plated areas and help the copper coating stay an even thickness.

It sounds like you thought I was having an issue, but I wasn't. At least, not with that.

More to follow when I have some more data.

[#40Fan]

Man, my camera makes these look like ****, but they are shinny!!! Cast bullet that I started out with for comparison.



They were plated to .310"-.314" then sized to .308". Started weight was 128 grains and now they are between 157-160 grains. I'll load some up and shoot this weekend.

This round of plating started Friday! Finally finished up today. What a cluster it was. First off, don't use any metal for any part of the setup that will be close to the plating solution. It'll either get covered in copper or, in my case, dissolve. The four prongs that I had sticking through the bowl to hold onto it, disintegrated, and kept the bowl from turning late Friday night. Stopped the process, cleaned up the bullets to keep them from getting corroded and called it an evening. I was too busy Saturday to mess with it. Come Sunday, I found a way to get the bowl turning, but then my circulation pump stopped working. Now I couldn't heat the water or keep it agitated. My 5 foot 1/4" piece of copper tubing that I was using for an anode was all but dissolved. Added another piece and just said to heck with it and let it run with no heat, no circulation. I periodically pulled a few bullets and measured the amount of plating and it took until this morning to finally get them where they would be usable in my 300 BLK.

I threw them in the tumbler and they really shined up. Sized down to .308", tumbled for a few more minutes to clean off the lube and took the picture seen above.

[#40Fan]

I wanted to see how evenly it was plating, so I took a bullet and milled a section off.

Same bullet with different lighting.

[lefty o]

doesnt look too bad, how do they survive a crush test?

[wrinkles]

Man, my camera makes these look like ****, but they are shinny!!! Cast bullet that I started out with for comparison.



They were plated to .310"-.314" then sized to .308". Started weight was 128 grains and now they are between 157-160 grains. I'll load some up and shoot this weekend.

This round of plating started Friday! Finally finished up today. What a cluster it was. First off, don't use any metal for any part of the setup that will be close to the plating solution. It'll either get covered in copper or, in my case, dissolve. The four prongs that I had sticking through the bowl to hold onto it, disintegrated, and kept the bowl from turning late Friday night. Stopped the process, cleaned up the bullets to keep them from getting corroded and called it an evening. I was too busy Saturday to mess with it. Come Sunday, I found a way to get the bowl turning, but then my circulation pump stopped working. Now I couldn't heat the water or keep it agitated. My 5 foot 1/4" piece of copper tubing that I was using for an anode was all but dissolved. Added another piece and just said to heck with it and let it run with no heat, no circulation. I periodically pulled a few bullets and measured the amount of plating and it took until this morning to finally get them where they would be usable in my 300 BLK.

I threw them in the tumbler and they really shined up. Sized down to .308", tumbled for a few more minutes to clean off the lube and took the picture seen above.

That is freaking cool. Guess what I'm going to be working on this weekend?

[wrinkles]

Been working on getting a plating barrel design. Found this home made close washer that I think if a perfect design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZ-ttnEM9o

[elmacgyver0]

I am also working on something, I have not posted anything before on reloading because I can't hold a candle to you guys.
If I am successful I will post a how to on how I did it.
I have already modified my design before even flipping a switch.

[Czy_Horse]

Years ago I worked in a couple of those dirty Plating shops doing Hard Chrome, Decorative Chrome, Nickel, Copper and Zinc. The results you seek require 2 plating operations with 2 different plating solutions. Its been 40 years but I'm 90% sure the first copper plating solution was alkaline based and the product came out a dull copper colour. I know the second solution was acid based and the product came out a bright and shinny copper colour. Then it was plated with a Bright Nickel and finished up with a few thou of Bright Decorative Chrome. Plating Tanks where heated to about +/-150 F. Each layer shines through the next so to say. Doing government jobs (bike parts) I would chemically degrease/clean the part and do a basic polish on it. Then it got plated in a Dull Copper, Bright Copper, Bright Nickel then into the Chrome tank.

Hard Chrome, we skipped the bright copper, the chrome was plated thicker than required, then surface ground to specifications.

Power Supplies, when we started the plating process, we would crank the power supply to MAX for about 2 minutes then lower to the plating settings. This would "draw" the plating material into the surface features/pores (like the inside corner of a lube grove) of what ever you where plating. If you didn't do this, the high spots got more than the recessed areas. The plate would sometime's come out flaky if this step was not long enough, power was not high enough or to much product surface area.

In an earlier post, someone said to add a big capacitor to your power supply. Yes do this. If you could look at your power supply output on an oscilloscope, under load, it will not be a flat straight line, it will have "DC Ripple". Adding the capacitor will filter out the DC ripple giving you a much better final surface.
Another way to see the DC Ripple is with an AC Voltmeter, measure the AC output of your DC power supply with and with out load. With no load connected, the AC Voltmeter should show 0.00 VAC, as the load increases on the power supply the AC voltage will appear and increase as the load increases. Good well regulated DC power supplies use heavy chokes and big capacitors to eliminate 'DC ripple' and will show very little AC voltage across all load conditions.


Edit: The more I think about it I'm 99% sure the first plating solution was alkaline based using 'caustic soda' to dissolve the copper into solution.