My first try at plating and pot medal, what I learned

**RickB1B** · 12-27-2005 11:18 AM

Well I thought I would share some of my thoughts after my first try at plating and especially since it was pot medal. First, all the posts above in the "sticky" are right on, but I have a few obsevations.

I tried to use Muggy Weld yo repair the pits. It worked, but as many pits as I had to do, when one area would cool down, it would just heat up and flow out of the pit when I heated another area. What I did that worked was to plate 1 hour in Flash Copper, sand and plate 1 more hour, then fill the pits with plane old 60/40 solder. This worked really well. Then I filed and sanded to the final shape.

While on the topic of Flash Copper, the first time I used it I sand blasted the item, then rinsed, then straight into the Flash Copper. This caused some blistering. I sand blasted again, then straight into the Flash Copper with out the rinse. This worked very well.

After the solder repair, I would Flash Copper coat the part for one hour, then sand with 400 paper. I had to do this about 6 times to fill all the small pits I did not get with the solder. One very important leason I learned the hard way, DO NOT USE ACID COPPER AT ANY TIME ON POT MEDAL. You may think you have a good coat of Flash Copper but there may still be very small pin holes. As I was plating with the Flash Copper I would get these bumps, at first I woulkd sand them all the way down to the base medal to get rid of them. Then I noticed they were solid and well attached so I started to just sand and continue plating until they were gone.

Now my question if anyine knows. After I plated with the Copy Chrome I found I had another one of these little bumbs; can I sand the Copy Chrome then Flash Copper to repair this.

BTW I attached the before and after pictures of my part. It's not too bad for my first try but I will do better next time.