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-----What plating salt is better for nickel plating?
Q. I tried silver nitrate for easy and quick plating and it's too dull. I want to know if potassium ferricyanide ⇦ on eBay orsit Amazon [affil link] dissolves silver metal as it dissolves silver on photography paper ... and for easy homemade solution which salt would be best to use to plate nickel, nickel oxide vs. nickel sulphate?
David Castillohobbyist - Abilene, Texas, U.S.A.
August 14, 2009
A. Hi, David. Please be careful about using chemicals that you have little understanding of. There are hazards about. But you can electroplate nickel out of nickel sulphate; you can't plate it out of nickel oxide because it's insoluble, meaning you'll have no (actually very very little) nickel in solution.
Commercial nickel plating solution is most commonly "Watts Nickel", a mix of nickel sulfate, nickel chloride, and boric acid. It also contains a surfactant for "wetting" and organic addition agents for brightening.
Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E.
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