• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Plating ?

I plated a few small parts today (A knob, threaded washer, & spring for a toolbox cover) & they look great. I used a 12volt, 6amp battery charger. Time will tell how well they are plated. I am not sure how well they are plated because I think all the cleaning & polishing could make the bare metal look good. Like I said....time will tell. I need to find a better zinc source than the sheet metal I used...it didn't last long & I got a lot of black slimey film coming off of it floating around my solution.
 
The black slimey stuff sounds like contamination. I got that in my set up yesterday afternoon as I tried to do stuff too fast and didn't have it clean enough. I let it sit overnight to settle and threw the very bottom of the mixture away.

I tried a cell phone charger for power as I had read about that. It had 4.5 volts DC with 1.6 amps. The product looked OK, but this afternoon I went back to the D-cell batteries and it came out looking a whole lot brighter. Could be the Eastwood solution is set up for lower voltage. I don't know but..............more experimenting. I did go buy all the ingredients for the vinegar, salt and sugar solution. Party on my frens.
 
Yes, that would be contamination. Here are a couple of tips that I think will help. I use a battery charger with 6 amp, 12 amp and boost.

Key is to clean your parts real good. If they are chromed than I remove the chrome with muratic acid bath with water. Then dip in a solution of baking soda/water to neutralize acid. I even dip parts after plating in the baking soda/water solution (Seems to keep the part from dulling after removing the grey haze/polishing).

The 6 amp/ the 12 amp works good. On larger parts like the axles/kickers/seat brackets etc....... The boost setting seems to work good. Not sure of reasoning but I think it is due to current going through the metal.

With using Gords mixture. I have let a part sit out for several months and it has not rusted. It has dulled some but still looks good.
 
darty, What is the ratio of muratic acid to water that you use to remove chrome? Also, the ratio of baking soda to water to neutralize the acid? Also, how long do you let it sit in the muratic acid? Stupid question probably; long enough to see that the chrome is gone?
Thanks
 
Gord

Yes long enough to see chrome gone.

I will look up ratio I am using.

I use about 1/4 of small box to gallon of water for baking soda. I know when it works when the part fizzes when it hits the water. I stir it occasionally before putting part in solution. Sometimes baking soda settles to bottom.
 
Gord said:
A friend of mine and I made our own zinc plater and it works great. Here is a break down of what we did. All non toxic to boot. I'll try to add some before and after pics.

What you need:
1 gallon of vinegar ($2.50 at any market)

½ Cup Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salt, get it any pharmacy)

½ Cup Sugar (Yup, the stuff you put in your coffee)

About 8” of 3” wide zinc flashing or any chunk of zinc like a boat anode. If you should be able to find zinc flashing at the hardware store, but if not you can get it online.

An aerator from a fish tank, Petco or other pet store.

Empty plastic jug with sturdy sides, like a detergent container something that isn’t too flimsy

A few old metal coat hangers

A manual battery charger.

2 test lead’s with an alligator clip on each end of each.


How to do it:

Cut the top off the empty jug and wash it out good inside.

Pour the vinegar, sugar and Epsom salt into the jug and stir it up well so it mixes in good.

If you are using zinc flashing, bend one side over the side of the jug and have the rest of it hanging on the inside of the jug. If your using an anode, suspend it so that it is mostly submerged in the solution with a little sticking out the top.

Run the hose from your aerator into the solution and start the aerator.

Let everything sit overnight, this will allow some of the zinc to dissolve into the solution.

Prep your parts:

Glass bead or wire brush all your parts really well, removing any rust or paint, then wash them very well in soap and water to remove any grease an oils that may be on them.

Next day;

Cut the coat hanger into pieces, making one to bridge the top of the jug and a few other pieces to use as hangers to hang your pieces into the solution. Clean the pieces of hanger down to bare metal with steel wool or sandpaper.

Next, with the battery charger UNPLUGED, run a test lead from the positive lead on the battery charger to the anode or flashing.

Now starting with your heaviest pieces to coat first, hang them one piece at a time into the solution from the bridge so they are completely submerged in the solution.

Run a test lead from the negative lead on the battery charger to the bridge your part is hung from.

Plug in charger. After a few seconds you will notice what looks like smoke coming off you part. It is actually zinc attaching to your part. Leave it in there between 5 and 10 minutes. Then UNPLUG the charger and remove the piece. Be careful when you grab the hangers, sometimes they get hot.

Next, using steel wool or a soft copper wire brush polish up the pieces removing all the gray haze. It takes a little while to do this but it works. I usually give my pieces 3 baths in the solution cleaning them up after each dip. Also if you want to you can polish the pieces with a rope wheel when you are done and they will almost look like chrome. If you have a small buffing machine, that is even better and faster.
Click to expand...


12V Gord plated very nice :D
does anyone have the formula for 24K Gold
obviously I am trying to save a few bucks
 
The black slime film came off the zinc plate after it had been used for a while (toward the end of it's usefull plating life). Could be that it's cheep zinc coating on the sheet metal.
 
Gord

Using 1 part muratic acid, 2 parts water. Make sure you dump acid into water and use it outdoors so you don't breath it.

You'll know when chrome comes off, won't fizz. Then dip in baking soda solution , bead blast, etc....
 
Thanks darty. Happy to see everyone is having good luck and fun with their plating projects.
We'll work on the 24K gold next!
 
Cool stuff Gord. I think my contamination came from nuts as there may have been deposits in the threads that wouldn't come clean or can't be seen easily. Everything else seems to be fine. I think I may get a plumbing combination wire brush for cleaning fitting to remove residue in the threads.
 
Gord said:
This is what we used: http://www.amazon.com/Zinc-Armor-1-...0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_indust_1/183-2110373-5453943
Didn't get any contamination from it. I asked my buddy about the anode and his thoughts were; the anode is not 100% pure zinc. There could be other materials in it that might float around in the mix.
Click to expand...

Hey Gord, I tried the swamp cooler anonde today numerous times and had no problems whatsoever and the parts came out a little shinier. I was skeptical but it seems to work just as good as the sheet zinc I have. For the $9 I am sold.

Chayzed
 
Great! Glad the anode worked.
For what it's worth I just tried to remove the chrome off an Ossa clutch actuator arm to plate it; the first time with 1 part muriatic acid and 2 parts water. 2 days and nothing. Then I went to straight muriatic acid for 24 hours and still nothing. Lots of fizzing and bubbling. It also ate in to the metal areas where the chrome had come off with my blaster. Finally I took it out and sanded the chrome off.
I'm sure this method works on some chrome plated parts, but not this one.
 
Would reversing the polarity on the plating set up pull the chrome off the part? (& send it to a dummy steel anode)
 
Interesting Gord,

I know that I have used the muratic acid thing couple of times now and it removed chrome.

Only took an hour or a couple, so maybe it had something else on there like hard chrome?
 
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