Electroless Nickel Plating

[rickjester]

I need to refinish the racks in my old cooking stove. I have been looking for answers but they are hard to find. I copied this at the USDA site, for food safe coatings. Can I use Caswells Electroless Nickel Alloy for my oven racks? Will Electroless Nickel Alloy stand up to 400 degree oven heat? Thanks.

"Electroless Nickel Alloy Coating
An electroless nickel alloy coating having the following composition is acceptable:

Nickel — 90% minimum
Phosphorous — 6% minimum and 10% maximum as supersaturated solution of nickel phosphide in nickel
Trace amounts of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen
No other elements
Equipment to be manually or mechanically cleaned may be covered by an engineering coating of electroless nickel alloy conforming to the applicable provisions of military specification MIL-C-26074 E, as amended. 6

Equipment may also be made of other nontoxic structurally suitable metal(s) that have their product contact surfaces modified by surface coating(s"

[CarWiz]

You can check with Caswell's tech support but I think their EN is 7% phosphorous. Not only will it stand up to the 400* but the heat will make it harder. How large are the racks. One thing you have to watch with EN is strictly adhering to the "Load" limitation or surface area of the item given the solution volume. (A 10 pint kit is limited to 75 square inches of surface area.) Also, you'll need to refresh the solution during the plating process.

[lcaswell]

None of our plating solutions are registered with the USDA as food safe.

[rickjester]

Thank you. I see that EN is not approved by the FDA, but it is in the 5-9% range listed by the USDA. They no longer make racks to fit my oven and I just want to take the rust off and protect them. I feel EN would work just fine, but I want to make sure I am not missing something. I looked into Tin coating also, Would that be better?

Thanks
Rick

[lcaswell]

Yes. It's a mid-phos 5-9% content.

How big are these racks?

Tin would work also.

[rickjester]

I have included two attachments. One is the wire rack which is 16 x 18, and the other are the handles and trim I would like to plate.

Thanks
Rick

[CarWiz]

You'll have more surface area on the handles than the grill. I come up with about 20.2 in/sq on the grill. One thing though, you may not have to plate the back of the handles. The area could be masked then finish painted after plating. Just another option.

[rickjester]

Do I have to go down to bare metal or just take the chrome and rust off.

Thanks
Rick

[CarWiz]

What's under the chrome? You'll be better off if you take the parts down to bare steel and polish. The plating will look like the surface it covers. If it's pitted, the plating will look pitted. If it's scratched the plating will look scratched. The plating will not fill voids unless you do a heavy copper plate and sand/polish the surface even. Then plate with EN.

Absolutely, the rust will have to be removed. You can't plate rust.

[shopsaw_Poppi]

I have a question about how your doing the Nickle Plating. did you build your tank? If so how did you do it? Also how are you planing on suspending the rack in your tank so it gets an even coat?