Acid Salts Pickling Solution At Room Temperature

          The first thing to do was to check the temperature of the acid salts solution.  Although the kit’s instructions do not specify a temperature I still checked to see what a “room temperature” was.

First Half Of The Spindle In The Acid Bath

          The first stage of plating is to ensure that the item is throughly cleaned.  I had already cleaned the spindle in my parts washer to remove the worst of the grease but to take it to the next level of cleanliness it needed a dip in the acid bath.

Acid Working Away On Spindle

          The instructions state that the item should be left in the acid salts for between 1 and 4 minutes, so to be safe I left the spindle in for 1 minute to start with. The left-hand side of the spindle shows the result of a 1 minute dip in the acid salts solution.

Whole Spindle Post Acid Salts Bath

Checking That The Electrolyte Had Cooled Sufficiently

         Before starting the plating I had to check that the electrolyte had cooled to between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius.  It wasn’t quite there but close enough to carry on.

Spindle Attached To Copper Bar

          The item for plating needs to be suspended from the negatively charged copper tank bar with copper wire.

The Spindle Plating

          The spindle had to be plated in 2 halves as it was too long to fit in the bath length-ways. The plating current was set according to the instructions (minimum current) and left to plate for 30 minutes.  After a few minutes you can see something reacting on the surface of the item being plated.

Plated

          After 30 minutes the spindle was rinsed in cold water and could be admired.

Plating Close Up

          In the close up photo below, you can see where I had not degreased the thread properly but other than that the finish is great.