Need Basic Plating Help

A. One thing that 1890's book is probably missing, Patrick, is 120 years of progress :-)

Try to get your hands on a modern book like the Metal Finishing Guidebook ⇨
or the Electroplating Engineering Handbook [on AbeBooks or eBay or Amazon] .

You also need to know that in 1974 the EPA made electroplating the nation's first categorically regulated industry -- which means that even the rinse water, let alone the nickel and silver plating solutions, is a regulated material that you cannot discharge without treatment and a permit (please see 40 CFR 430, which will be available online). As long as you do not plate any item you sell, or plate anything for money, you probably are not a 40 CFR 430 business though.

For the nickel, the most important thing is you need to get proper nickel anodes. Every plating shop has nickel crowns or nickel squares. Ask a local shop if you can buy a few dollars worth, or go to one of the vendor's of brush plating kits for consumers (several are listed in our Products and Services directory). This is probably not a very good nickel plating solution, but I guess it will work after a fashion for a hobbyist.

I'm surprised you can plate silver at all since I thought silver chloride would precipitate out of solution. Silver plating may not be for hobbyists: first, you mostly plate it out of deadly cyanide solutions or proprietaries; second, you might generate a wildly explosive silver fulminate if you aren't careful; third, soluble silver salts are such a powerful biocide that casual neutralization with bicarbonate just isn't good enough.

As for the cleaning, forget the acetone; use a tampico scrub brush [on eBay or Amazon] and wetted powdered pumice [on eBay or Amazon], and maybe a little detergent.

Best of luck.