Gold/Silver plating of natural objects Q&A

A. Hi Marion,
If you can settle for copper plating rather than silver it will be easier, cheaper, and safer. Just go to youtube and search for 'copper electroforming' for lots of instructional videos. But basically you clean the shell, then metallize it with graphite or metallic paint or specialty metallizing solutions, then you electroplate it, and then probably lacquer it to retard tarnishing and prolong the life.
The problem with silver plating, besides the expense, is that it usually necessitates plating solutions based on deadly cyanide, which really aren't appropriate for hobbyists. You can buy non-cyanide silver plating solutions but they are costly and finicky and, although the color is probably 'good enough', it's not quite right. So please do you early experiments and learning with copper plating before moving on to silver :-)

Luck & Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Very good book on that subject: Electroforming by Leslie Curtis; London 2004 ⇨
Copper plate your objects and then you can silver or gold plate them. You can use ferrocyanide based gold and silver plating solutions. Potassium ferrocyanide is nontoxic cyanide compound!

Hope it helps and good luck!

A. Excellent presentation on 19th century electroforming technology,Metropolitan Museum in New York, 2012.

A. My own opinion is that electroplating may not be a real good garage hobby because of the hazardous chemicals, Fred. But if you have some artistic ability and wish to acquire some skill and experience, we have an FAQ on this subject to get you started if you wish. Good luck.

A. If you want one particular item of yours plated in such a fashion, Meagan, it would be quite expensive due to labor cost; but you can just post an RFQ on this site and see if plating shops respond to you.

But there are people who plate flowers and leaves and sell them as jewelry, gifts, or Christmas tree ornaments available at catalog prices.

Places which, as of this writing, appear to offer plated natural items include fourleafclover.com, ronchudy.com, canadiangifts.com, wynbrier.com, 24kgoldenroses.com, www.artmartgifts.com, and nature's design [Los Angeles]. Best of luck.

Ed. note Dec. 2014: We've struck through those suggestions which appear to no longer be in business. Which goes to show that while finishing.com is a good place for technical Q&A's, search engines like Google are for 'live' searches and are a better tool for sourcing info.

A. Hi, Sachin. Have you had a chance to read the FAQ yet? I think it will help!

If you want to retain a consultant for this, start with our Consultants Directory please. If you are looking for additional online help, please try to describe what your situation is (experience level in electroplating, etc.), and see if you can phrase your questions in terms of what is already explained in the FAQ. Thanks!

Good luck.

A. There is so much info on the net that most of us have to give it a quick scan rather than a careful read, David, but please slowly reread this thread because we actually already tracked down and listed 8 places, not one, but most are now no longer in business.

Thanks.

A. I do what everyone is talking about and that is electroforming ... Electro plating is for metal on metal ... Electroforming is metal on natural or organic items like leaves, pine cones, sea horses, sand dollars, gemstones and or anything you want to cover in gold, copper, silver and rhodium.

A. Hi, Jim! Yes, what you do is electroforming. But I must nitpick "for the record" because people often come to this site for metal finishing definitions. Electroforming actually means that the electrolytically deposited metal comprises an object rather than a coating on an object.

Thus the metal deposited onto plastic circuit boards and plastic car emblems is still called "electroplating", even though the substrate is organic; and bellows & waveguides & record stampers are "electroforms" even though they may have been created by plating onto a metal substrate and then being separated from it.

Perhaps the best definition is that if the plating layer is free-standing, rather than adhering to an object, the plated layer is an object itself and an electroform.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007

A. I think you are referring to the process that I would call "2-part silvering", Bruce. In the simplest approach, a 2-headed spray gun simultaneously sprays silver nitrate and a reducing agent that converts the soluble silver nitrate to a thin film of silver metal. You may wish to buy a proprietary process because some of the traditional reducing agents (like formaldelhyde) are carcinogenic. But I understand sugar can be used too. The search term "brashear process" may help you. Good luck.

A. Hello, Adrian. You are an art student and a jeweler, so you have two important things strongly in your favor! Many inquirers miss the fact that such items are works of art, and artistic talent is an important ingredient :-)

See if your library has this book ⇨
or look on youtube for 'electroforming' videos.

Good luck.

A. Hi, Traci. Sorry, but I'm not aware of any such list or any organization that would be likely to have such a list. A number of places make standard items like silver plated leaves, gold plated orchids and roses, bronze plated shoes, etc.; we listed eight, and you can probably find others with google. But I don't know any that let you pick the item, and then plate it for you. I wish at least one would advertise here where people are looking. Meanwhile you might try to find Jim D'Andrea or the company "Enchanted Gold" listed in our FAQ on the subject. Best of luck.

Regards,

A. I sell real leaf jewelry and gifts which are made for me. We have a nice selection. Retail prices range from $19.95 to $35.95 depending on the item
Thanks for your information on this page.

A. Hi, Aaron.

I'm not sure what you mean by "iridescent" gold -- can you e-mail a photo?

It's not impossible to gold plate using a plate of gold as the anode, but it's not typical for a number of reasons. Usually you would buy a gold plating solution from companies like Technic or Gold Touch [a finishing.com supporting advertiser]. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi folks.
Iridescence and gold/copper plating are actually two independent things.
'Iridescence' applies not just to gold or copper plating, but also to carnival glass, the rainbow colored oil slicks on puddles, and other things. Iridescence is what develops when very thin transparent or translucent films of oil or oxides are present. Part of the light hitting it bounces off the top of the film; part of it goes into the film and bounces off the object (or bottom of the thin film). The portions of the light taking the shorter and the longer paths are out of sync and 'interfere' with each other, amplifying some wavelengths (colors) of the light and suppressing others.

But it seems that what is pictured here is not that sort of carnival glass iridescence' :-)
It looks like there is no copper in the center, just the leaf and lacquer. And on the veins there is heavy copper. I can only guess that the metallizing paint/ink [on eBay or Amazon] was put on in this pattern, perhaps with a brush on the veins, and then a light spatter elsewhere? Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hello,


I was looking up for information on ELECTROFORMING and your page was really helpful. I found this other page, which explains HOW TO do the process and it seems doable.

Thank you, once again, and here www.ehow.com/how_8726954_electroform-leaf.html is what I found that could come in handy.

Mafalda

Hi, Mafalda. Thanks! Please mention an interesting factoid from that link; many links go bad in short order, and then the posting would offer no substance, just a broken link :-)

What did you find from that link that was especially interesting to you? Thanks again!

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Try next link:
www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/electroforming.htm

Very good and reliable source of info (and there you can find more articles on electroforming too).
Hope it helps and good luck!

Hi Elizabeth

An interesting and challenging project.

Rice comes in a wide range of shapes and sizes but taking an average and sparing you the maths 1 tonne has a surface area of about 4,400 sq m (almost exactly an acre!)

A one micron thick layer on a square metre is 1 cc. Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cc so you are looking at roughly 85 Kg of gold. The price today is over £30/g

So your project will cost over £2,500,000 plus the considerable processing cost. You will also need to factor in security and insurance costs, and rice at about £400 per tonne

Alternatively you may consider an old but clean concrete mixer and a few aerosol cans of gold paint. I would forget the epoxy unless you have a convenient outlet for a one tonne block of solid rice.

A. When I first read the header I thought, wow he wants to gold plate rice? Well very possible indeed (if it was a handful of rice)...

The rice needs to be coated first with a sealer; you can then proceed with electroless Nickel/Cobalt and then immersion gold.

Good luck,