Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading
Copper Plating
unfy:
Final-ish clothespin design.
Two clothespins attached to each other.
One clothespin grabs the lead bullet via plastic extension and staple grabber.
A size 4-40 screw, nut, washer holds the plastic to the clothespin. The wire is also wrapped around this just to keep it in place. Has to be tight enough to hold plastic in place yet not split it.
Wire is wrapped and soldered to the staple grabbers.
Second clothespin is attached via an 8-32 bolt, nut, washer. Chosen simply because that's what I have spare of.
Wire from both plastic-staple leads is crimped between 8-32 washer and nut.
Head of 8-32 bolt inside the mouth of the secondary clothespin is what provides the electronic contact to the rail above the solution. The drill bit in the picture simulates this.
unfy:
Over the course of the night and morning, assembly lined the clothespin clippy production while doing other stuff.
Going to bed, after i wake, i have one last step to do to each of them (attack the copper wire and solder it). that'll be 25 clippies plus prototypes made. will be time to cast some lead, rough it up, and plate a batch of 25 with before/after weight checking etc.
should prolly have used slightly different bolts/nuts for the copper rod grabbing thing, that required some wood filing due to larger size (doh). Used 8-32 (tis what i had handy), 6-32 or 4-40 woulda been better.
Picked up a couple things for possibly making lead roughing up easier, dunno if I'll fiddle with it immediately or after the batch of 25.
edit:
separate staples. a cheap staple gun woulda made this faster heheheh.
assembly line:
* using a template, mark plastic forks for cutting of heads, notching, and hole drilling
* cut off all the heads
* drill all the holes in plastic
* notch all the staple groves, i used a file.
* form staples into notches and for bullet holding
* disassemble 25 clothespins
* drill holes through mouth pieces to attach to plastic (not using a drill press, so easier to do single than while still assembled)
* using a template, mark 25 clothespin sides for drilling for attachment to second clothespin
* drill those 25 holes
* since i was using larger nuts/bolts, also file the area around the above 25 holes just a bit so the clothespin operates better
* larger nuts / bolts -> also file the opposite halves a lil for nut clearance
* disassemble 25 more clothespins, keeping it separated
* drill the hole into the mouth of each of them for rod grabby & attaching to original clothespin
* larger nuts/bolts, file the mouths with the new holes
* attach plastic extensions with staples to 25 of the original clothespins without the second hole
* attach second clothespin halves to the double holed clothespin halves
* now it's time to mate the two sets of plastic-extended clothes pinstogether
* just hold an already-plastic-attached halve to a double-halved one, and pick out a matching length plastic-with-staple unused piece to match in length so staples will grab evenly (even though from template, there will be slight variances).
* attach matching plastic piece to the double-halve piece
* attach the last half of the pipe-grabby clothespin.
* wrap wire around staples and thread to the rod-grabby nut and screw/clamp into place
* solder staple / wire connection. may not be required, but just in case.
The holes should be as uniform in distant from the near edge of the fork as possible. The notches should be parallel and equidistant from the hole. If using a template, this be the case. The notch depth isn't too important... that is, fairly deep notches didn't seem to hinder anything.
Some of my plastic staples are a bit loose on the plastic, they rattle ever so slightly.... in all honestly, it doesn't seem critical that they're absolutely firm in place... just so long as they don't wiggle more than 15-20 degrees probably. I used a single pair of decent needle nose pliers for the job. Broke 3 staples i think. You'll wanna attach the staples so the plastic side facing the wood always the same (top/bottom of the fork?)... just so it's consistent with the rounded molding of the plastic. One side seems to usually fit the wood better in the few brands i tried.
unfy:
Cast some bullets, roughed them up with steel wool, weigned them, got them in the plating now.
Had a couple hangers break on me... one was a staple, another was plastic fork. Meh.
Voltage through the solution appears to be low, only 0.3-0.4v. Kinda weird.
A preliminary check at 10min shows that a few will probably not plate. unsure why atm.
unfy:
3 hours, 25 bullets, 1.0-2.5 grains added to bullets. not nearly enough. 1 did fail to plate, dunno why.
left a solitary bullet in for another 25min, it added another grain of copper.
An approximation would be wanting to add 5 to 7 grains of copper to the bullets (looking at how these plated and how the extra grain looks).
I did a lot more reading, it looks like a sulfuric acid semi-based bath is easy enough to do and outside of acid handling and tank setup doesn't require any more stuffs. Just gotta substitute some of the water in the solution for battery acid.
Still not interested in fiddling with the acid. If i had a garage i would heh.
There's a lot that can be optimized about tank lay out now that I've seen real world stuffs to compare with the documentation you can read.
Tomorrow i'll attempt 25 more without my variable dc thing in the middle and just the full 13v-3A.
This will probably fail and I'll have to call this project closed due to not wanting to handle the seemingly necessary acids within the house (have pets).
The clippies ? EXTREMELY successful. Soooo much easier to work with. Dunno how they'd stand up to sulfric acid tho heh.
Next project after this will be either the case feeder or bullet swaging.
Edit
Actually, gonna go ahead and attempt to rearrange my plating tub a bit before giving it one last go. gonna aim for proper anode and agitation placement.
unfy:
Went ahead and grabbed some battery acid from Auto Zone. $4 for a quart. This should be ~35% sulfric acid, which makes the plating better. Cheap, and if I decide to not to use it I can either do something else with it or neutralize it (or possibly sell it ?).
For the most correct copper plating solution given 2 gallons of water, i should need about 3 quarts of the stuff rather than just one... but.... I'm already uncomfy with using it as is.
I'll get my tub rearranged how I want it concerning multiple anodes and hopefully the bubbly agitation stuff where it should be... prolly try again.... and if that doesn't work out, debate if to use the acid.
If I do go the acid route:
Gotta pick up a bunch of baking soda to neutralize stuff...
Will have to test a bit of my tub material to make sure the acid doesn't eat it. Same goes for the air tubing. Assuming it doesn't, it'll then be a matter of letting the tub 'heat up' for a long time, removing the aquarium heater, putting acid in, letting it settle, and then another plating attempt.
Will also need to move my plating setup to a different room with concrete flooring and better ventilation.
If all else failed but the acid plating works... I'll be at a loss for what to do next. I can't leave the acid bath laying around the house due to pets so I'll prolly have to neutralize it :(. Best bet would prolly just wrap things up with a final post concerning the final setup, materials used, estimated costs, as much as i can remember for what i did, and suggestions on improving it (a more professional tank design comes to mind). Then there's always the option of fishing for someone that has a garage and willing to offer a 4x4 foot area for to continue the experiments in hehehe.
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