Copper Plating

[unfy]

Some good success!

1.5v (one battery), 20min. 

added 0.7 grains of copper.  calipers didn't seem to notice any thickness differences so it's prolly very dense.  it was also fairly resilient. (required metal to scratch).

i'll be leaving it to plate over night so i can reweigh it and take calipers to it as well.

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Tonight was victorious!

[unfy]

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left overnight attached to a D-cell, it's now 11.6 grains heavier than it was as just pure lead.

it's still rough, but like the 20min thing - pretty solid. 

measured at the base of the ogive above the lube band, it's .420 inches (from .401).  and from the picture it's very sparkly.  what's needed next is probably fluid agitation while coating.

but.... at 20min it seemed almost servicable, at 30 it probably is, etc.

[unfy]

I'll be adding some bleach or vinegar (one or the other) to the solution tonight.  Supposed to make it easier to rip copper off of the donor easier so that it can plate faster.

Also going to pick up some lemon juice as a "not so dangerous" etcher (mixed with salt).

I don't have a proper acid neutralizer to work with so I don't wanna open up the HCl bottle and have an accident i can't fix.

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I'd appreciate some ideas on how to get the fluid moving / circulating.

There's the coffee pot idea that's on youtube and stuff... which... I kinda don't like (copper sulfate steam ? no thanks).

I *could* grab a small fish tank heater.  That'll heat the liquid but not really cause any circulation.  I also imagine if it cracked that'd instantly blow a breaker or worse

I wonder if i have an old cake beater or something .... and i wonder how fast it moves on it's slowest speed setting.

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of course, at 20-30min, i could just *stir* the thing.

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Edit:

Currently this is where I'm at.

Solution:
* 2 gallons of distilled water
* 3 cups root killer

Power:
* 13v 3amp through 12v car bulb - this seems to attempt to plate too fast.  Prolly way too much current
** adding an acid to the solution prolly helps
* 6v (4-D cells) - still seemed to plate too fast
* 3v (2-D cells) - also a failure, but quite possibly due to improper metal prep before plating
* 1.5v (1-D cell) - at 20min it had a nice coat. overnight it was a sparkly xmas ornament
* note --- i don't have proper amperage metering info yet

Process:
* Rough up the bullets with a wire brush
* Acetone bath for a few min (5ish)
* Distilled water bath / rinse for a couple min
* Plating process
* Distilled water rinse
* Pictures

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Coming up:
* Vinegar or bleach into copper sulfate solution
* Salty lemon juice etching process before acetone
* Some way of circulating solution

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Down the road:
* Need to run a batch of 50 or 100 bullets through the plating process. 
** Sadly, the only lead i have right now is pre-lubed Missouri Bullet Company
** i *know* amperage will need to increase as increase surface area / deposition rate... and/or plating process will slow down.  might have to fiddle with other power stuff when moving on to that.
* Would separating my anode into 2 opposite sides in parallel help any for a more even spread ?
* Heat the liquid ? coffee pot hack ?
* Silly strong acid etch
* tumble plated rounds for 5-10min in vibrating tumbler
** do they buff up pretty ?
** do they lose their plating ?

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Consumable costs:

* Some copper for the anode.  Should last a long time though.
* Distilled water (doesn't require much, $1 a gallon too)
* Acetone (doesn't require much either, $6 a half gallon ?)
* Etching solution (lemon juice or something).
* Electricity (either recharging batteries or DC power supply).
* Time

Hopefully this means that after initial up front cost and time of building the thing.... plating becomes almost free (outside of time)!

[unfy]

And just for some amusement and possibly other info.  Grabbed a cheap $60 usb microscope I bought for work.



^^^^ This is a "smooth" section from the overnight bullet

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^^^^ this is a bumpier section , near base of the bullet, the blue band in upper left was apparently some bullet lube i missed somehow?! i didn't see it when i was cleaning :/.  Wonder if it's copper sulfate related (the lube groove is where wire holding bullet was) ??

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^^^^ this was an area that i chipped off this morning on purpose (was a clump sticking out from bullet)  Can see the straight up lead underneath and some of the bondings around it.

[kozball]

How about an air pump for a fish tank, or a very small water pump like they use for fountains or bubblers. Maybe from the garden shop at Menards.

[unfy]

kozball: yup, looks like air agitation will be just fine.  have a friend that does the reverse (stripping instead of plating).  i have spare aquarium air pumps for that

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I'll be adding some vinegar to the solution tonight.  Need to work out numbers for how much.

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A neato and handy document for those doing their own research:

http://ixian.ca/gallery/albums/pics_documents/Copper_Plating.pdf

[Dan W]

I would be curious to see the surface of a commercially plated bullet under your microscope

[unfy]

Went to walmart, bought the under $10 single air channel air pump thing, some tubing, lemon juice, non-iodized salt, and vinegar.

will be posting more in a bit .

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Dan: I'll bring a berry's bullet to work tomorrow and take some pics.  I'll also bring whatever i plate tonight.

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edit: was single channel, not dual channel.  with holes poked in tubing with hot needle, single channel doesnt seem to push enough air like i want. it's agitating, but not great.

[unfy]

brushed, 5min lemon juice + salt pickle, rinse, acetone 5min, rinse, plating for 20min on a C cell.

140.3 grains start -> 140.7 grains finish

start size: .401 -> .4015 to .4025

coating is fairly smooth.

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The bullet on the left is the one above, the one on the right was in the tank for 40min on the C cell.

It added 1.4 grains of copper, but came out .4020 to .4030 depending on positioning.

It's also got a slightly rougher finish.

Berry's does between... I think 0.003 of an inch up to 0.008 ?  I'm still approximately 0.0015 - 0.0020ish, so i need to nearly double my plating thickness to get to where berry's is.

I'll take these to work tomorrow to see how they look under scope (along with a berry's).

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I can't scratch either with my fingernail.

[unfy]

Left to right: berry 125gr 38, 20min, 40min from last night (both 140gr 10mm)

these were in my pocket for the morning.

although the noses look dark, i believe that's just dirt / etc.... closer inspection seems still shows a copper look.

[unfy]

For Dan W. If there is something in particular or a different angle or more zoomed out or something ya want, lemme know.

These are the Berry 125gr 38cal.  Close up, it looks a lot like it does the naked eye -- hammered into place or "pasted on like clay then cooked" or something. 









This is a plated bullet with or without the internal light of the microscpe thing turned on.

Looking at it - i wonder if my brush is way too harsh, which is what is causing the crystalization like formation when plating the rounds.  The pot marks are also interesting.

Note: I don't believe the dark / blue-ish spots are lead.  They might be , but i think that's just highly reflective copper.








This is the same microscope I used to take pics of my failed brass i posted a year ago, btw.  Handy little investment (i bought it for electrical engineering, but is helpful for this too).


Tonight - I'll be adding the vinegar to the copper sulfate finally.  I'll also try to more lightly polish the lead before plating it (see above pics).  Prolly need to grab some non-soapy steel wool.  If none of this helps -- it'll be an aquarium heater.

I will probably also try throwing these two currently plated bullets into my brass tumbler/vibrator with corncob media for 5min and see what happens, etc.

[NE Bull]

unfy; I'm enjoying following your experimental journey, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about Thomas Edison:  about invention of light bulb; "I didn't fail, I found 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb; I only need to find one way to make it work."  Keep plugging away.

[unfy]

NE Bull: yeah.... i debated not posting quite as much, but i figured showing my records of successes / failures / ideas / etc would be beneficial in general.  It's also handy when I have a question and such.

Currently, I'll be adding just plain white vinegar to the copper sulfate.  It's only 5% acidity, and i'll be dumping in a quart of it.  That much extra water technically changes solution percentages, but since this isn't an exact science ATM (just plating lead to shoot out of barrels for plinking! heh).... not too concerned. 

Supposedly, it shouldn't be too hard to find 'spirits of vinegar' which would be a 20-32% concentration ... which would be preferred... but walmart nor hyvee had it.  And technically, sulfuric acid is ideal - but i want to avoid that if I can (still easy to get from hardware store or maybe automotive store).

I did take a sharpie and mark the side of my tub after dumping in the 2gal of water and 3 cups of root killer .

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Looking forward to tonight with a finer brush / scouring pad thing and acid-in-copper-sulfate to see if I can get a thicker smoother plate! (acid too i guess).

Coworkers who work with their hands more than I do (i'm a programmer by day) were unable to scratch my plated bullets.  One was able to crease it by running his nail sideways though.  Progress!


I think soon... it might be time to try larger batches and actually use the scaffolding etc.  I'll need either buy / get / make some unlubed bullets for that.  Don't have a lead pot yet

[DaveB]

Since I know nothing of what this involves or how it works, I am having a blast watching the progress. Thanks.

[unfy]

Dave B:

In broad terms it's quite simple.  A salty lightly acidic solution, a piece of copper on the + side of a battery, the thing you want coded on the - side.  Youtube has plenty of videos on home made plating stuffs that are real easy to do.  I'm just taking it a bit beyond that for a practical purpose rather than a science class trick 

There are safety concerns... copper sulfate needs to be treated with much respect (toxic... it *is* labeled root killer after all).  Acetone... well.. everyone should know how to treat finger nail polish (avoid flames and all of that).  So far, the acids I've been working with are household kitchen style.  No pipe cleaner style stuff yet... so... the acids are generally safe as well (lemon juice and vinegar as of yet).

There's some attention to detail which any reloader would feel right at home with anyway .

Hopefully I can get this ironed out and actually suggest a parts list and instructions so others can repeat it if they desire.  Hell, I may even offer to sell Unfy Plated Bullets (TM) since the cost should still be much cheaper than Berry's..... and after trying mine - the client might get into doing it themselves as well and try new things so we can all learn from their experiments!

IE: nickel plating (not terribly difficult to do either from what I understand... just requires some prep work to get a replacement 'copper sulfate' like solution ... the nickel equivilant) !

[OnTheFly]

I have no idea how the commercial bullets are plated, but is it possible that you could drop yours into a case cleaner and they would come out polished looking?

Fly

[DaveB]

How about tumbling the lead before plating, that should smooth it out I would think too.

[unfy]

I have no idea how the commercial bullets are plated, but is it possible that you could drop yours into a case cleaner and they would come out polished looking?

Fly

They use much more narly chemicals and a rotating basket / drum kind of thing.  I dunno if the weight of the bullets impacting each other helps smooth it out or not, but the more interesting chemicals is definitely beyond this project (I like living, thank you very much).

The rotating drum stuff -- if ya grabbed an old rotisserie grill attachment thing and built the basket to be your cathode source, this would be plausible.  This would be an entirely separate project due to the extra engineering involved.  Also, spinning basket would solve agitation problems.

As far as putting my plated bullets into a case tumbler or something AFTER the fact -- I actually plan on trying this.  Subsequently, if I feel that maybe I need to do more than one coat of plating, a tumbler / vibrator cleaning thing is probably the easiest way to "polish" them for the next coat.

How about tumbling the lead before plating, that should smooth it out I would think too.

I believe the purpose of wire brushing / cleaning the lead prior to plating is to remove oxidation to make it plate better.  This would also tie in with the etching step (ie: you also should etch metals and concrete before painting, etc).  There is a noticeable shine difference between straight lead and freshly "polished" lead.  Ya can hit your own lead with a wire brush (gun cleaning kit?) and see the difference.


Tonight's agenda:

Vinegar to copper sulfate solution

Finer steel wool / brushing of the lead

Skipping the brushing of the lead and trying just a lemon juice / acid bath etch.

Throwing last nights plated bullets into vibrating tumbler.

[unfy]

tumbling was relatively useless in a vibrating tumbler - the bullets are heavy and just sit at the bottom.

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vinegar added



hit it with steel wool gently instead of a stiff brush.  was in salty lemon juice for 10min.

not sure what's up with the dark spot and stuff.  maybe it was touching side of tank ? maybe i touched it too quickly as it came out of the tank ? i have no idea. there is a spot in the middle of the darkness that looks like lead.... and can be picked at by a needle like lead.  ... really dunno what happened.

without the microscope .... this one definitely feels smoother even though it's at 30min.

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no-physical abrasion (but 30min in salty juice) attempt is plated for about 20min

it's not even at all, it's spotty, and flakey.

abrasion is required or a stronger or longer etching.

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hit one of last nights bullets with a wirebrush fairly gently (moderate?), and it didn't flake.  it's sitting in acetone right now and will be attempting replating it in a bit.

[unfy]

second plating did well, 30min, added a grain.

roughed it up some more with steel wool, juice bath for 2 min, acetone for 4 min, back into the dip.

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lemon juice is prolly not a valid etching thing.

.... looking at the HCl ... i *really* don't want to open that