# want to try this



## patnor1011 (Jul 29, 2014)

How would one do this? I mean it look so nice and uniform, it is copper plate over lead it make sinkers look and perform better. Did anyone plated copper over lead here?


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## Harold_V (Jul 29, 2014)

I've had limited experience in plating---just a small amount of copper, and some gold. However, I expect that one would have to use a cyanide solution for plating that type of assembly, if for nothing else, a strike, on which a heavier copper could be plated with a sulfuric electrolyte. Could be wrong, and if I am, Chris is likely to voice his thoughts. I believe he's worked closely with platers in his long career.

Harold


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 29, 2014)

With proper preparation of the base metal or material, you can then plate on essentially anything. With lead, fluoboric acid was probably used in the preparation. When I was into plating, my boss kept a pile of dog poop displayed that had been brilliantly gold plated, just to prove the point that you can plate on anything.


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## FrugalRefiner (Jul 29, 2014)

Pat,

I've just started re-reading the second edition of Ammens. Just yesterday I read:


Ammens said:


> Obviously, if you simply place a sheet of copper and a sheet of iron together,
> nothing like this happens. The ions must be situated so that they can get together.
> As an example, take a piece of copper and dissolve it in a solution of sulphuric
> acid {H2S04), one volume of acid to two volumes of distilled water. Now you
> ...


I don't know if that will work with the lead portion, but it might give you a starting point.

Dave


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 29, 2014)

Although Ammen wrote a separate book on electroplating, I think his knowledge about plating on a professional level was quite lacking. The quote given involves what is called immersion plating. Same thing as cementation. Immersion plating gives very poor adhesion of the deposit and is used in industry for very few applications. I can't see it working well on the sinkers.


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## patnor1011 (Jul 29, 2014)

Some people use hydrochloric acid as pre treatment of lead bullets prior to copper plating. They plate them in copper sulfate bath.


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## Shark (Jul 29, 2014)

Copper plating lead has always been an interesting subject. I have never tried to do it, but have fired some of those bullets in various pistols and the copper sulphate plating seems to do decent in that respect. I would like to be able to plate them as well as the fishing lure in patnor's picture above and try them again. Keep us informed on what you find. This refining habit has kept me busy enough studying until I had left of the thoughts of plating for sometime.


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## Harold_V (Jul 29, 2014)

goldsilverpro said:


> Although Ammen wrote a separate book on electroplating, I think his knowledge about plating on a professional level was quite lacking. The quote given involves what is called immersion plating. Same thing as cementation. Immersion plating gives very poor adhesion of the deposit and is used in industry for very few applications. I can't see it working well on the sinkers.


What Chris said. That's the reason a cyanide strike was employed before switching to a sulfuric acid electrolyte, where a heavy deposit is possible. The cyanide strike isolates the base metal from the sulfuric electrolyte, preventing cementation, which destroys the base material by dissolution. 

Harold


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## Claudie (Jul 29, 2014)

Gold plated dog poop, what will they think of next? :|


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## Geo (Jul 29, 2014)

Claudie said:


> Gold plated dog poop, what will they think of next? :|



You can't polish a turd.


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## rickbb (Jul 29, 2014)

Geo said:


> Claudie said:
> 
> 
> > Gold plated dog poop, what will they think of next? :|
> ...



Sure you can, my boss does it quite regularly. But at the end of the day all he gets is a shiny turd.

The real puzzle is why his boss keeps congratulating him on doing such a fine job. The rest of us just walk away shaking our heads.


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## Claudie (Jul 29, 2014)

Here is a link to a post on another forum about Copper plating Lead bullets. 
http://www.finishing.com/294/14.shtml


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## patnor1011 (Jul 31, 2014)

Yep that is probably one of the places I went through when reading about subject.


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## Irons (Jul 31, 2014)

I would think that trying to plate Lead with Copper, directly in a Copper Sulfate bath would passivate the lead, due to Sulfate Ions.

I have a number of plated Jigs, so someone out there is doing it.


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## Shark (Jul 31, 2014)

I haven't thought about it, but a lot of new sinkers and jigs are now made from bismuth or a tin alloy. Would that be easier to plate copper onto? Just a thought I had never considered.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 31, 2014)

This guy uses a vinegar solution saturated with copper sulfate (I think) and ends up with what looks like acceptable copper plating. He ends up polishing in a vibratory finisher with corncobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4j54vC8n4&list=PL3ED96DA13384CA03&index=1

There are many other vids on youtube for this.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=copper+plating+lead+&search_sort=relevance&search_category=0&page=

If you look closely at the photo that Pat posted, you'll see that the eye and a small portion of the shank have also been copper plated. This would lead me to believe that the hook was held in some sort of conductive fixture and was submerged only to the point where you see the copper on the shank.

It is difficult to plate on lead. The main problem is to get good adhesion of the copper on the lead. I would doubt that any of the methods on eBay (above) would give excellent adhesion. It might help if, when copper plating, to put the parts in "live." This means to set the PS at the approximate known voltage before putting the hooked up parts into the bath. That way, when the parts enter the bath, amperage will be immediately applied to them. If you put the parts in without current, some copper can cement loosely onto the lead. Then, when you apply current, the loose cement deposit between the lead and the electroplated copper can cause poor adhesion. Here are some other plating-on-lead threads on finishing.com.
http://www.finishing.com/search/googleresults.html?cx=partner-pub-5713050610876877%3Abgdpn1eyj60&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=copper+plating+on+lead&sa=Search&siteurl=www.finishing.com%2Fletters%2Findex.html&ref=&ss=11551j7191781j22

I might also mention that finishing.com holds about the same position in the plating world that goldrefiningforum.com holds in the PM scrap refining world. Neither has any real competition on the internet.

Here is ASTM B319, which may be helpful in plating on lead.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/225591831/B-319

The hook/sinker in the photo was possibly plated as such: Alkaline cleaner; Fluoboric acid dip; Copper cyanide strike (as Harold suggested) or nickel fluoborate strike; bright copper fluoborate plate. Since there may be migration of the lead into copper, it may be best to use a nickel strike followed by nickel fluoborate plate before applying the copper. A bright copper sulfate bath might be used instead of copper fluoborate. All, of course, with good rinsing between each step. One could plate on tin in much the same way.

If interested in plating, the best book available is "Graham's Electroplating Engineering Handbook." I have owned the 3rd edition for 30 years. I recently bought a 4th edition (790 pages - new) that is published in India (in English ) in paperback by CBC for about $30-$40, whereas I have seen the identical hardback from Von Nostrand Reinhold sell for as high as $850 new.
http://www.alibris.com/Grahams-Electroplating-Engineering-Handbook-Fourth-Edition/book/-812391365


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## FrugalRefiner (Aug 3, 2014)

I happened to be doing some research on copper acetate today, and came across an instructable on copper plating. I have no idea how well it would work on lead, or how well the plating would hold up, but it uses vinegar and copper acetate (which can be made with copper metal and vinegar): High Quality (and Safe) Copper Plating

Dave


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## goldsilverpro (Aug 3, 2014)

A little trick. I have done this many times over the years when I didn't have a particular metal salt needed for a particular acid plating solution.

Many different metal salts can be formed from a solution of the metal, sodium carbonate, and an acid. For example, let's say you have copper sulfate (or other copper salt) and want to make copper fluoborate from it. You would dissolve copper sulfate in water, precipitate copper carbonate with a solution of sodium carbonate, filter and rinse well, and then dissolve the copper carbonate in fluoboric acid. If you wanted copper acetate, you would dissolve the copper carbonate in an acetic acid solution. For copper chloride, you would use HCl. For copper sulfamate, use a solution of sulfamic acid. Etc., etc. Of course, you should know the equations involved and use the proper amount of chemicals. Good rinsing of the metal carbonate would be very important. This same procedure can be used for many different metals. If you start with reasonably pure chemicals, the final product should be pure. If not, in some cases, the purity could probably be improved by crystallization.


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