If you live anywhere near a marina/boatyard you could do worse than to ask the guys in the yard for some old anodes from the underside of a boat. They're pure zinc (for seaborne vessels) and usually just get dumped. Some are huge and weigh two or three kilos! There'll be plenty of product left for plating purposes.
Riverborne (fresh water) boats use magnesium anodes, BTW.
For the home plating specialistCan't believe this thread is still going. With summer here, I'm not spending a lot of time on the web. So needless to say, I've not been keeping up with posts lately.
The zinc pills would probably polute the solution because they are not a glob of pure zinc, but some compound with zinc as part of it. Probably not enough zinc to plate a straight pin anyway. The solution will only absorb so much zinc. Once that happens, it only dissolves additional zinc as the metal plates out on parts. This is why the first time you make the solution the zinc is eaten up quickly. After that, the zinc lasts quite a while. My first set up ate the zinc up in a few days. I'm pretty sure I posted about it here in the early part of the thread. My next set up did not eat the zinc and I still have those plates in the bucket with plenty of life in them. regards, Rob
yeah, snake, fair point. like i say, i'm no chemical/medical or meturaligy student. still getting reasonable results, only day 2, done a few nuts and clips, but my first lot of zinc is still in the bath. looking forward to getting a proper sheet of the stuff. here's my ickle setup:
Rheostat/Charger/Volts/AmpsI have been following this thread since you guys started it. I got the zinc strip and am trying to put together by plating outfit.
I went through the whole thread and copied and pasted all relevant comments into a Word document, thinking I would distill it down into a kind of "best practice" kind of guide for myself and to help me put together my plater. But, I find I still have some questions. First question: It seems to me like there is an optimum voltage/amps combo that should be the target in the bath. It would seem that would drive the choice of parts for the plating setup (if not somebody please set me straight). You had a comment about .85 volts and .85 amps giving you good results, but then there is the comment about the Caswell set up being 1.5 v. Does anyone know if there is a target for volts/amps that optimizes zinc plating? Second question: I think Snake has figured out that a 1-2 Amp 12v charger or power supply coupled with a 50 watt/500ohm rheostat is a good combination. Others are having luck with smaller amperage chargers but the plating either takes longer and/or works well only on smaller parts. Is this a good assessment? Third question: I am guessing that my "float" and "automatic" chargers will not work because a guy wants a steady current to keep the plating even. It would seem like a "manual" or "trickle" charger would work okay or just a dedicated power supply, but that would be about it. Is that correct? Fourth question: I have an old ceramic 300v 100 ohm, 1 amp rheaostat. Physically it looks like overkill, but those parameters are out of sync with what has been described. Can I use it with a different size power supply and hit the target Volts/amps? I am probably going to buy a charger or power supply, so this is important. Thanks for your help and thanks for all the time you guys have put into this thread. I am really getting excited to get started.
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