Sorry - been a busy few days.
You might have a problem plating Stainless Steel with a regular nickel kit. You'll probably need some of our Stainless Steel Activator. See
http://www.caswellplating.com/accessmenu.htm
You will probably need to convert your Plug N Plate kit into a mini-dip plating system to plate those small items.
Do you have a copy of our plating manual?
Basically, you want to suspend the screws into the solution from a thin piece of copper wire. Hang the wire from a piece of copper pipe, sitting across the bottle of solution.
Connect the negative connection, your black alligator clip, to the copper pipe.
Place the plating wand in the bottle so that it is adjacent, but not touching, the suspended screw. Plug it in and you'll see results in 10 mins or so.
Test it by plating a small piece of copper, so you can easily see the results. When plating nickel onto steel, it's not easily apparent that a plate was deposited.