Trouble in Your Tank? Handbook for Solving Plating Problems

Plating Troubleshooting Book Details

Trouble in Your Tank? Handbook for Solving Plating Problems by Lawrence J. Durney is a plating troubleshooting book for finishers who want a disciplined way to diagnose shop problems rather than chase symptoms. Publication records for the title include 1983, a second edition in 1986, a 1991 listing with ISBN 9991219641, and a 1996 listing with ISBN 1569902003. Ted Mooney’s review specifically describes the illustrated second edition as a 1986 hardcover with 185 pages. The publisher is listed as AESF, Gardner Publications.

This is one of the more practically important plating books because plating problems are rarely solved by guessing. A bad deposit, cloudy part, poor adhesion, burning, pitting, roughness, skip plating, contamination, poor coverage, or inconsistent corrosion performance can have many possible causes. The wrong response can waste chemistry, damage parts, confuse operators, and make the original problem harder to identify. A useful plating troubleshooting book teaches the reader how to narrow the field methodically before making corrections.

Ted Mooney calls Larry Durney one of the luminaries of the plating industry, and that matters here because the book is not presented as a generic defect chart. Trouble in Your Tank? aims to educate the reader in an organized and efficient methodology for solving plating problems while also transmitting hundreds of small tips learned over a lifetime. That combination is exactly what many finishing shops need: a repeatable troubleshooting process plus the practical observations that help an experienced plater notice what is really happening.

A central feature of the book is Durney’s 12 Rules. The rules are explained individually, collectively, and in the right sequence through anecdotes. That sequencing is important. Troubleshooting often fails when people jump to a favorite explanation, add chemicals too soon, ignore recent changes, overlook cleaning or rinsing, or assume the bath is guilty before checking current density, parts, racks, anodes, agitation, filtration, temperature, analysis, drag-in, or drag-out. A rule-based method can slow the process down just enough to prevent expensive mistakes.

The book also includes trouble tables for each type of plating, individual chapters on classic problems, and more than a hundred shop problems illustrating application of the rules. That makes it valuable both as a training tool and as a reference for experienced personnel. Trouble tables help a reader compare symptoms against likely causes, while shop problems show how the reasoning process works in realistic conditions. For a foreman, chemist, consultant, quality manager, or owner, that practical format can be more useful than a purely theoretical treatment.

This plating troubleshooting book fits naturally beside practical questions about nickel, zinc, copper, chromium, brass, cadmium substitutes, electroless nickel, cleaning failures, passivation issues, and process-control surprises. Many finishing questions begin with a symptom, but the best answers usually ask for context: bath analysis, operating conditions, material, pretreatment, recent changes, current density, temperature, appearance, and whether the problem is new or chronic. Durney’s approach appears to support that same diagnostic mindset.

This page is also a buying guide. If you are looking for Trouble in Your Tank?, confirm the exact title, Lawrence J. Durney as author, edition, year, condition, and ISBN when available. Older marketplace entries may vary in how they describe the title. If the goal is practical troubleshooting, the reviewed 1986 second edition is especially notable because Ted’s comments and the 185-page description refer to that edition.

Older troubleshooting books should not replace current supplier instructions, safety rules, environmental requirements, or customer specifications, but they can preserve shop wisdom that remains useful. The lasting value of this book is not just a list of defects; it is the habit of diagnosing plating problems in an orderly way.

Related Finishing.com Resources

• Finishing.com search: plating troubleshooting book – Search Finishing.com for related archive discussions and technical context.
• Troubleshooting Modern Bright Nickel Plating Solutions – Finishing.com technical article focused on nickel plating troubleshooting.
• Finishing.com Current Q&A – Legacy question-and-answer archive with many practical plating troubleshooting discussions.

External Resources

• WorldCat search for Trouble in Your Tank Lawrence Durney – Library catalog search for matching records and editions.
• Google Books search for Trouble in Your Tank Lawrence Durney – Book search for alternate bibliographic records.
• Open Library ISBN record – Bibliographic record matched by ISBN and reviewed during the deep research pass.