Caswell Plating

Someone sent me an email about Caswell, but unfortunately I thought it was a PM and deleted it before I read it. Whoever sent it try again. I remember 'tree' being part of the name.

Dave
69S

Re: Deleted email about Caswell

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the post. I'll just paste my question here as maybe some other users may benefit as well....thx...Doug


"..........

I've followed a few of your posts about restoring your hardware and am at
the exact decision point with a total rebuild of a '75 Mk3.

I have been looking at Caswell Copy Chrome kit and would love to get some
feedback on your experience.  The electroless kit has some appeal but I
also have a Moto Guzzi and likely a Triumph project to follow so I think my
best bet is the 3 gal immersion system (flash copper + Copy Chrome.)  The
triple chrome seems out of reach in both financial and health
considerations.

I know you tried the brush system and had mixed results.  Specifically, I
would love to hear what results and more importantly,
durability/longevity/corrosion resistance you think I could get with the
full immersion kit.

The 3 gal kit + rectifier is going to run near $600 so I want to make sure
I'm not going down the wrong road here before I buy.  

If you could send an email with your thoughts or a phone call a fellow
Norton guy would be much in debt.

Best regards,

Doug Beck
Minneapolis, MN

Re: Deleted email about Caswell

I went way on the cheap side and bought just the solution for the copy chrome plug and plate kit, PNPCC9. I think it was about $20 and is for brush plating, but I used it in a glass with a small power supply I had to do the electro plating. In general, the results were not very satisfactory. The stuff is really a nickel plate with some bluing agent in it to look like chrome. It's not bad if you get all the rust off, a good polish, cleaning and a good plate, but I started messing up with the wrong anode and some of my later stuff is now getting rust spots on it. Since it's a nickel plate the stuff will tarnish. Here's my fork top bolt today before and after I polished it with just some Meguiar's Cleaner Wax on a tissue, so it's easy to polish back. And my spacer and spindle on the rear wheel which is starting to rust, either from left over rust or lack of plating.







I think if I did it again, I'd go with the cobalt electroless plating kit, you can get the small one for $90. Depends on how much stuff you want to do. If you aren't worried about it looking like chrome or polished stainless, one could go with just cad or anodized plating from a local plater There is a recent thread about how to cad plate, but I don't think I want to mess around with cyanide. At least with the Caswell stuff, they have ways to break down the solutions so it's not bad any more.

In any case to get these plating kits to work right, you have to totally follow the instructions and there may still be some playing around with it. Biggest thing is to get all the rust off old parts, polish if you want shiny, and it must be degreased completely. I used carb cleaner instead of the Caswell heated cleaning solution since all of my parts were pretty small. Once you buy one of their kits, you can use their plating forum and the help there may or may not be helpful.

The nice thing about these plating kits is you are only putting on maybe .001" or less, so the build up on threads is not usually an issue. If it were chrome plated, you would be building up a lot more than .001"

Hope this helps, I'll see if I can rename this thread Caswell plating.

Dave
69S

I ^%$^%$ around this stuff for %*(()^& countless days.. and I can confidently say ~

Don't waste your time.. too hard ~ the result is never guaranteed ~

Okay; you may be a little adept than me.. but I figure I wasted SO much valuable time purely-

( because there is simply no professionals around here )

Get a good result ~ then polish it up and then < six months > later the (ferrous ) metal simply rusted through!!

What a waste of time ~ (IMO)

Hate them in hindsight !

I have no experince with Caswell kits, but I know a bit about electroplating and played with it a bit.
If good results were easily achieved with these kits , all of us would be using them,
home zinc plating etc is relatively easy, chrome plating is a different ball game .
my local electroplater here in Asia does triple nickle, looks ok and fine for the locals coz its cheap, looks ok but dont last, I send my parts 400 miles away to have my bits done correctly, copper, nickle, chrome, as good as a job I could get in Australia and a fraction of the cost and usually about 7 to 10 days turn around ,not 3 months or more.
I'm at my local electroplater nearly every day getting things nickle plated zinc plated and polishing done,
I went there this arvo and they zinc plated parts while I waited, at $1 per kg,

For the price of paying platers, and the time involved to learn and do it yourself if it even does work, buying stainless and polishing it yourself is probably the best option in the long run. That said, some of the early pieces I did that got a good plating seem to be holding up just fine like the fork top bolt.

I wouldn't go spending $600 on a plating kit until I'd spent lots less than that on a small kit to see if it even works to my level of desire. That's why I may try the $80 electroless cobalt for some of the parts that didn't turn out so good. $80 would do all the small parts I want that would cost real big bucks in stainless.

When I was on the Caswell forum, there were a lot of guys that never did seem to get it to work, but there were a few that did. I was kind of in between. Also, I don't mind trying different projects.

Dave
69S

Home chrome plating is a different ball game to professional plater’s work. But can be done if you have the expertise and equipment
If you just polish the parts then chrome plate, it will simply rust from underneath the chrome- Why? - because chrome plating is microns thin, and is porous, it allows water to seep through it.
For a long lasting job, you should bite the bullet and pay out for a triple plating job- you need double the coating of copper before chrome plating.
You could however save yourself a lot of labour by polishing the parts yourself before sending them of to the platers.

I wouldn't go any where near chrome plating, it requires a 3 plate process, copper, nickel and then chrome. Leave that to the pros. However there are some nickel plating systems out there that will work, and as usual most of the work is in the prep. If it's not prepped right, it won't work, so you better be prepared to do some experimenting. Most failures are attributable to lack of prep work, as usual.

Dave

Dave and others,

Thanks much for the insight. I'm going to have to give some thought how I want to proceed.

The good thing with a restoration is there are always 100 other things to do when waiting on parts or inspiration in any given area.

It seemed on the Caswell forums that folks had better corrosion resistance with Copy Chrome if they first plated with a coat of copper. Also, like Dave said, prep really seems to be key.

FLJ ... Thanks for the reply on the Caswell forum as well. I wish their user base overall was more like this one.

Best regards,

Doug