Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Kuehn
Quite an impressive undertaking. The only time I ever tried electrolysis rust stripping I had a hard time keeping the parts from flash rusting before I could apply a new finish.
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Kevin,
Flash rusting was a big problem on a chassis this large. I couldn't get copper or nickel to plate fast enough to avoid flash rusting This old Admiral was copper plated originally. What I learned was, you have to wash/ scrub all the flash rust off in cold water right before dipping in the plating solution. The zinc plating solution , along with use of 4 zinc electrodes helped get the most coverage at the lowest voltage. The the amperage draw seems to be dependent on part size and distance from the donor electrodes. I used 6 vdc at about 5-10 amps for the chassis. I dipped it many times and rotated as needed. I know now, that a plating vessel twice the volume and having electrodes aimed at all chassis faces simultaneously would do a much better job of plating evenly. That would require twice the amount of ingredients to mix a batch of plating solution. The plating bath I used is 6 gallons of liquid.