hey guys I’m Nate welcome back to the
workshop metal plating is a fun and
relatively easy project that you can do
at home with some easily available
supplies and chemicals metal plating is
a process by which one metal is
chemically bonded to the surface of
another this can be used to change the
appearance electrical conductivity or
corrosion resistance of a material the
purpose of today’s video is to learn an
easy do-it-yourself method for both
copper and nickel plating we’ll start
with the copper plating here’s what
we’ll need for that process sim
distilled water some copper sulfate a
piece of copper pipe and an old cell
phone charger it’s possible in this
experiment will work just fine with tap
water but it’s best to eliminate any
unknown minerals and chemicals so that’s
why we’re using distilled water this
route kill product I think is the
cheapest way to get copper sulfate and
any sort of pure form it’s sold in most
hardware stores always be sure you’re
wearing gloves when handling this stuff
because it can be pretty irritating to
the skin this is just a scrap of copper
pipe pretty much any piece of scrap
copper will work just fine
the old cell phone charger is an AC to
DC adapter it takes in anywhere between
100 and 240 volts and has an output of
five point nine volts at point three
seven five amps as our first step let’s
measure off two cups of our distilled
water into a glass jar and then let’s
heat that up in the microwave there we
go now we’ve got our water heated up
nice and hot it’s not boiling but it is
quite warm so let’s measure off one and
a half ounces of our copper sulphate
crystals and mix our crystals into the
water we can use glass plastic or I’m
using bamboo but we don’t want to use
anything metal to stir this up there we
have it our copper sulphate crystals are
almost entirely dissolved into our water
moving on to the next step let’s prep
our power adapter we don’t need the part
that plugs into a cell phone so let’s
clip that off and split the wires now
with our wires split let’s strip the
ends about an inch and a half
[Music]
with the wires stripped let’s attach
alligator clips one to each end making
sure that the ends of our alligator
clips are not touching each other we can
plug in our cord one of these is the
negative lead and one is the positive to
test which is which let’s dip the tips
of the clips into our copper sulfate
solution we can see that the alligator
clip with the black lead has become
coated with copper on the tip so that’s
the side that will attach our metal that
we want plated with the two leads
identified let’s unplug our cord while
we prep our metals to be copper plated
to start out let’s try using a regular
quarter and see if we can get that to
take a nice copper coating before we
start dipping it into the liquid with
electricity running through it we need
to clean and prep the surface so it’s
completely free of any dirt or oils
let’s clean this quarter in two stages
first I’ve got some very fine steel wool
and I’m just gonna scour over the entire
surface of the quarter every little bit
of it to try and clean it off then to
make sure I’ve got all degrees removed
I’ve got some grease removing soap and
I’ll try and wash down the quarter
really well I’m also wearing gloves so
any grease that’s on my hands will not
get transferred on to the quarter you
see that our quick buffing has made our
quarter a fair bit shinier same thing on
the back there we go with the surface of
our quarter nice and buff let’s take our
soap and really try and clean all the
greases and oils off of it
[Music]
our quarter is prepped and ready so now
let’s attach a piece of copper to our
positive lead and then the coin to our
negative lead now once we plug in the
cord we should be able to dip the coin
down into the liquid and a copper
plating should start to appear pretty
quickly just as a first test I’m gonna
dip the quarter down in and then pull it
out after only about two seconds let’s
see if it does anything one two you can
see it’s already started to get a little
bit of a tint around the edges so that’s
going pretty fast put it back in but
leave it for a little bit longer one two
three nine ten boom look at that that is
a quarter coated in copper now one thing
is often right where the lead is biting
into it
there will be a little spot where the
plating isn’t very even so I’m gonna
move the lead to the other side of the
quarter and we’ll dip it back in this
time I think we’ll try leaving in for
twenty or thirty seconds I’m going to
turn it around as well so the other side
of the coin is facing the copper pipe
some of the time
when we go look at that that is a coin
with quite a bit of copper plating it we
have a nice shiny copper colored quarter
let’s rinse off the quarter and see if
we can buff that so it’s a little bit
shinier we’ve got our steel wool let’s
lightly buff our copper and see if it
brings out any shine buffed with steel
wool that looks pretty good let’s also
try using a little bit of brass polish
to see if it will bring out the shine
just a little bit more
[Music]
see it’s definitely doing something now
maybe if I used a Polish that was
specifically designed for copper we
would get an even better look but brass
is mostly made of copper
I think the brass polish is working
pretty well yeah he’s looking good that
is one shiny copper quarter see a color
comparison between a regular colored
quarter and a copper colored quarter all
right I really liked how the quarter
turned out so now I want to try doing
the same thing with a nickel and a dime
so I can just have a whole copper
colored set
[Music]
there we have it I think our copper
plating is working out wonderfully so
now let’s move on to how to do your own
nickel plating nickel is a bright
silvery colored metal that is very
corrosion resistant so if you have
something that’s plated in nickel it
will often stay looking nice and new
even if it’s been around for quite some
time for our nickel plating we need even
fewer supplies than we did for our
copper plating we’ve got some distilled
white vinegar and some guitar strings
now you can see down at the bottom that
says that these guitar strings have a
pure nickel wrap the only local sources
of pure nickel that I could find was the
wrap around these guitar strings and
sometimes you can find pure nickel
welding rods if you’re doing this make
sure you get some that say they have a
pure nickel wrap other strings may say
that they are nickel but unless they say
pure nickel on them it’s probably a
nickel plated steel that won’t work very
well so to start let’s just pour off
some white vinegar into our glass jar
with our vinegar poured into a jar we
now want to add a small dash of our salt
this will help the vinegar be a little
bit more conductive this is sea salt but
you can really be using any type now we
need to remove the pure nickel wire from
the steel core of the guitar strings you
can see that the pack comes with several
different thicknesses of guitar strings
let’s start with the thickest one if you
look very closely as I begin to unwind
this wire you can see that there is one
wire wrapped very tightly around a
second wire with these guitar strings
the outer wire is our pure nickel and
the inner wire is a nickel plated steel
we now want to unwind all of our nickel
wire from off of the inner core pretty
simple process let’s just grab the
nickel end secure the rest of the wire
and start pulling should unwind
[Music]
once we get about six to eight inches
down let’s just clip off the core wire
do the same thing again until we’ve
pulled the whole thing off the guitar
string yeah that’s pretty good right
there we can toss out the end of our
guitar string we won’t need it now we
want to divide our nickel wire into
approximately two even pieces all right
now I’ve got a good length of nickel
wire let’s just wrap this around our
fingers a few times a lot of times
actually just keep wrapping until
there’s only about a foot of the wire
left unwrapped go we now have this nice
bundle of nickel wire it’s got a tale
about a foot long so let’s squish down
our bundle and then let’s use that tail
to wrap it all closed we go one nice
little nickel stick let’s just do the
same thing with the other bit of wire
now that we have our two bundles of
nickel wire we want to attach one of
them to each of our alligator clips that
we were using before at this point we
want to lower the alligator clips down
into our vinegar until almost all of the
nickel is submerged in the vinegar I’ll
also use a little bit of electrical tape
to hold them in place so they don’t
accidentally bump into each other now
shortly after plugging in our charger we
see bubbles starting to form on the
negative end you’ll want to watch this
solution and check up on it every few
hours the nickel wire will actually
begin to dissolve from the end that
isn’t bubbling after 8 to 10 hours you
may need to replace it with a new string
by that time you may also be able to see
a slight change in color as your vinegar
changes from clear to a slightly
turquoise green now we need to plug in
our charger and let this sit for 24 to
48 hours now here I’ve got a solution
that I let sit for about 24 hours and in
the process of doing so it dissolved its
way through two of those nickel guitar
string wraps
so now that we have our solution of
what’s called nickel acetate
we can begin to use this to plate nickel
on to copper nickel doesn’t do a very
good job of sticking to most metals but
it will stick to almost anything with a
copper base so it’s copper brass or
bronze we successfully coated three
silver colored coins in copper now let’s
see if we can take a copper colored coin
and turn it silver the process is
basically the same except that instead
of using a copper pipe we just use
another one of our nickel wraps attached
to the positive end attach it to our
cleaned and polished penny see it
starting to react very quickly
I haven’t dipped the penny all the way
in so we should get a nice dividing line
right across it to see the difference
beautiful there’s a shiny half silver
penny right there
let’s turn it around and coat the other
side so we just have a completely silver
colored pin you can see it’s currently
bubbling more on the spot that wasn’t
already plated in the nickel it’s also
bubbling quite a bit around the
alligator clips which I think I’m
turning back to silver colored the
nickel goes on very smoothly so if you
had a shiny object going in you usually
have a shiny one coming out you probably
should not try metal plating any
utensils that are going to be using for
eating just because if the metal isn’t
bonding properly it could come off and
you know if you have a nickel or copper
allergy it’s just not a great idea but I
am going to try it on the spoon not to
eat with just because I think it will
look cool on the nice curved surface you
can’t really see through the liquid no
orange color comes up out of the blue
very well we got a little bit around the
edges of our spoon that’s interesting
this is stainless steel and it really
doesn’t pick up much color very well
almost like it resists staining not
nearly as fast as the coins those just
those go almost immediately it’s getting
somewhere though we’ve got copper
building up around the edges I even hit
this spoon with some light and grit
sandpaper to help the copper stick
better but I think it’s just gonna wipe
right off with a paper towel there we go
I think our stainless steel spoon is
about as coated in copper as it’s going
to get
see it doesn’t stay at all not very much
little bits down at the tip stayed most
of that is just coming right off just
for kicks and giggles let’s see if we
can nickel plate the copper on the end
of our stainless steel spoon something
is definitely happening
lots of bubbling going on down there
[Music]
well I think that pretty well worked
we had our copper all built up on the
back of the spoon now and it’s turned
back to being great colors just sort of
a weird model gray now it doesn’t look
like a new spoon it looks like this
spoon has maybe been kicking around for
quite a few years and just getting eaten
up on the edge oh and it’s not sticking
it earlier so you can see it’s peeling
right off that’s the copper is
delaminating from the stainless steel
but even though I thought I did a very
good job of cleaning this stainless
steel spoon it does not want to stick to
it at all there you have it easy
do-it-yourself copper and nickel plating
like I said before nickel doesn’t stick
to everything but copper does stick to
quite a bit so if you have something you
want nickel plated you can copper plate
it first and then clean it and transfer
it into the nickel bath something else
that’s good to know is these liquids
shouldn’t really go bad very quickly if
you’ve got a lid you should be able to
put that on your jar store it away and
then pull it out and use it again when
you’re ready for your next plating
project if you’ve got any great ideas of
things you think will look good plated
in either copper or nickel let us know
down in the comments and we might just
try it out
thanks for joining us for this video
today and remember to come gear yourself
up with hats shirts and other cool merch
at the king of random comm see you there
so now we have just so much stainless
steel does not like to stain
[Music]
workshop metal plating is a fun and
relatively easy project that you can do
at home with some easily available
supplies and chemicals metal plating is
a process by which one metal is
chemically bonded to the surface of
another this can be used to change the
appearance electrical conductivity or
corrosion resistance of a material the
purpose of today’s video is to learn an
easy do-it-yourself method for both
copper and nickel plating we’ll start
with the copper plating here’s what
we’ll need for that process sim
distilled water some copper sulfate a
piece of copper pipe and an old cell
phone charger it’s possible in this
experiment will work just fine with tap
water but it’s best to eliminate any
unknown minerals and chemicals so that’s
why we’re using distilled water this
route kill product I think is the
cheapest way to get copper sulfate and
any sort of pure form it’s sold in most
hardware stores always be sure you’re
wearing gloves when handling this stuff
because it can be pretty irritating to
the skin this is just a scrap of copper
pipe pretty much any piece of scrap
copper will work just fine
the old cell phone charger is an AC to
DC adapter it takes in anywhere between
100 and 240 volts and has an output of
five point nine volts at point three
seven five amps as our first step let’s
measure off two cups of our distilled
water into a glass jar and then let’s
heat that up in the microwave there we
go now we’ve got our water heated up
nice and hot it’s not boiling but it is
quite warm so let’s measure off one and
a half ounces of our copper sulphate
crystals and mix our crystals into the
water we can use glass plastic or I’m
using bamboo but we don’t want to use
anything metal to stir this up there we
have it our copper sulphate crystals are
almost entirely dissolved into our water
moving on to the next step let’s prep
our power adapter we don’t need the part
that plugs into a cell phone so let’s
clip that off and split the wires now
with our wires split let’s strip the
ends about an inch and a half
[Music]
with the wires stripped let’s attach
alligator clips one to each end making
sure that the ends of our alligator
clips are not touching each other we can
plug in our cord one of these is the
negative lead and one is the positive to
test which is which let’s dip the tips
of the clips into our copper sulfate
solution we can see that the alligator
clip with the black lead has become
coated with copper on the tip so that’s
the side that will attach our metal that
we want plated with the two leads
identified let’s unplug our cord while
we prep our metals to be copper plated
to start out let’s try using a regular
quarter and see if we can get that to
take a nice copper coating before we
start dipping it into the liquid with
electricity running through it we need
to clean and prep the surface so it’s
completely free of any dirt or oils
let’s clean this quarter in two stages
first I’ve got some very fine steel wool
and I’m just gonna scour over the entire
surface of the quarter every little bit
of it to try and clean it off then to
make sure I’ve got all degrees removed
I’ve got some grease removing soap and
I’ll try and wash down the quarter
really well I’m also wearing gloves so
any grease that’s on my hands will not
get transferred on to the quarter you
see that our quick buffing has made our
quarter a fair bit shinier same thing on
the back there we go with the surface of
our quarter nice and buff let’s take our
soap and really try and clean all the
greases and oils off of it
[Music]
our quarter is prepped and ready so now
let’s attach a piece of copper to our
positive lead and then the coin to our
negative lead now once we plug in the
cord we should be able to dip the coin
down into the liquid and a copper
plating should start to appear pretty
quickly just as a first test I’m gonna
dip the quarter down in and then pull it
out after only about two seconds let’s
see if it does anything one two you can
see it’s already started to get a little
bit of a tint around the edges so that’s
going pretty fast put it back in but
leave it for a little bit longer one two
three nine ten boom look at that that is
a quarter coated in copper now one thing
is often right where the lead is biting
into it
there will be a little spot where the
plating isn’t very even so I’m gonna
move the lead to the other side of the
quarter and we’ll dip it back in this
time I think we’ll try leaving in for
twenty or thirty seconds I’m going to
turn it around as well so the other side
of the coin is facing the copper pipe
some of the time
when we go look at that that is a coin
with quite a bit of copper plating it we
have a nice shiny copper colored quarter
let’s rinse off the quarter and see if
we can buff that so it’s a little bit
shinier we’ve got our steel wool let’s
lightly buff our copper and see if it
brings out any shine buffed with steel
wool that looks pretty good let’s also
try using a little bit of brass polish
to see if it will bring out the shine
just a little bit more
[Music]
see it’s definitely doing something now
maybe if I used a Polish that was
specifically designed for copper we
would get an even better look but brass
is mostly made of copper
I think the brass polish is working
pretty well yeah he’s looking good that
is one shiny copper quarter see a color
comparison between a regular colored
quarter and a copper colored quarter all
right I really liked how the quarter
turned out so now I want to try doing
the same thing with a nickel and a dime
so I can just have a whole copper
colored set
[Music]
there we have it I think our copper
plating is working out wonderfully so
now let’s move on to how to do your own
nickel plating nickel is a bright
silvery colored metal that is very
corrosion resistant so if you have
something that’s plated in nickel it
will often stay looking nice and new
even if it’s been around for quite some
time for our nickel plating we need even
fewer supplies than we did for our
copper plating we’ve got some distilled
white vinegar and some guitar strings
now you can see down at the bottom that
says that these guitar strings have a
pure nickel wrap the only local sources
of pure nickel that I could find was the
wrap around these guitar strings and
sometimes you can find pure nickel
welding rods if you’re doing this make
sure you get some that say they have a
pure nickel wrap other strings may say
that they are nickel but unless they say
pure nickel on them it’s probably a
nickel plated steel that won’t work very
well so to start let’s just pour off
some white vinegar into our glass jar
with our vinegar poured into a jar we
now want to add a small dash of our salt
this will help the vinegar be a little
bit more conductive this is sea salt but
you can really be using any type now we
need to remove the pure nickel wire from
the steel core of the guitar strings you
can see that the pack comes with several
different thicknesses of guitar strings
let’s start with the thickest one if you
look very closely as I begin to unwind
this wire you can see that there is one
wire wrapped very tightly around a
second wire with these guitar strings
the outer wire is our pure nickel and
the inner wire is a nickel plated steel
we now want to unwind all of our nickel
wire from off of the inner core pretty
simple process let’s just grab the
nickel end secure the rest of the wire
and start pulling should unwind
[Music]
once we get about six to eight inches
down let’s just clip off the core wire
do the same thing again until we’ve
pulled the whole thing off the guitar
string yeah that’s pretty good right
there we can toss out the end of our
guitar string we won’t need it now we
want to divide our nickel wire into
approximately two even pieces all right
now I’ve got a good length of nickel
wire let’s just wrap this around our
fingers a few times a lot of times
actually just keep wrapping until
there’s only about a foot of the wire
left unwrapped go we now have this nice
bundle of nickel wire it’s got a tale
about a foot long so let’s squish down
our bundle and then let’s use that tail
to wrap it all closed we go one nice
little nickel stick let’s just do the
same thing with the other bit of wire
now that we have our two bundles of
nickel wire we want to attach one of
them to each of our alligator clips that
we were using before at this point we
want to lower the alligator clips down
into our vinegar until almost all of the
nickel is submerged in the vinegar I’ll
also use a little bit of electrical tape
to hold them in place so they don’t
accidentally bump into each other now
shortly after plugging in our charger we
see bubbles starting to form on the
negative end you’ll want to watch this
solution and check up on it every few
hours the nickel wire will actually
begin to dissolve from the end that
isn’t bubbling after 8 to 10 hours you
may need to replace it with a new string
by that time you may also be able to see
a slight change in color as your vinegar
changes from clear to a slightly
turquoise green now we need to plug in
our charger and let this sit for 24 to
48 hours now here I’ve got a solution
that I let sit for about 24 hours and in
the process of doing so it dissolved its
way through two of those nickel guitar
string wraps
so now that we have our solution of
what’s called nickel acetate
we can begin to use this to plate nickel
on to copper nickel doesn’t do a very
good job of sticking to most metals but
it will stick to almost anything with a
copper base so it’s copper brass or
bronze we successfully coated three
silver colored coins in copper now let’s
see if we can take a copper colored coin
and turn it silver the process is
basically the same except that instead
of using a copper pipe we just use
another one of our nickel wraps attached
to the positive end attach it to our
cleaned and polished penny see it
starting to react very quickly
I haven’t dipped the penny all the way
in so we should get a nice dividing line
right across it to see the difference
beautiful there’s a shiny half silver
penny right there
let’s turn it around and coat the other
side so we just have a completely silver
colored pin you can see it’s currently
bubbling more on the spot that wasn’t
already plated in the nickel it’s also
bubbling quite a bit around the
alligator clips which I think I’m
turning back to silver colored the
nickel goes on very smoothly so if you
had a shiny object going in you usually
have a shiny one coming out you probably
should not try metal plating any
utensils that are going to be using for
eating just because if the metal isn’t
bonding properly it could come off and
you know if you have a nickel or copper
allergy it’s just not a great idea but I
am going to try it on the spoon not to
eat with just because I think it will
look cool on the nice curved surface you
can’t really see through the liquid no
orange color comes up out of the blue
very well we got a little bit around the
edges of our spoon that’s interesting
this is stainless steel and it really
doesn’t pick up much color very well
almost like it resists staining not
nearly as fast as the coins those just
those go almost immediately it’s getting
somewhere though we’ve got copper
building up around the edges I even hit
this spoon with some light and grit
sandpaper to help the copper stick
better but I think it’s just gonna wipe
right off with a paper towel there we go
I think our stainless steel spoon is
about as coated in copper as it’s going
to get
see it doesn’t stay at all not very much
little bits down at the tip stayed most
of that is just coming right off just
for kicks and giggles let’s see if we
can nickel plate the copper on the end
of our stainless steel spoon something
is definitely happening
lots of bubbling going on down there
[Music]
well I think that pretty well worked
we had our copper all built up on the
back of the spoon now and it’s turned
back to being great colors just sort of
a weird model gray now it doesn’t look
like a new spoon it looks like this
spoon has maybe been kicking around for
quite a few years and just getting eaten
up on the edge oh and it’s not sticking
it earlier so you can see it’s peeling
right off that’s the copper is
delaminating from the stainless steel
but even though I thought I did a very
good job of cleaning this stainless
steel spoon it does not want to stick to
it at all there you have it easy
do-it-yourself copper and nickel plating
like I said before nickel doesn’t stick
to everything but copper does stick to
quite a bit so if you have something you
want nickel plated you can copper plate
it first and then clean it and transfer
it into the nickel bath something else
that’s good to know is these liquids
shouldn’t really go bad very quickly if
you’ve got a lid you should be able to
put that on your jar store it away and
then pull it out and use it again when
you’re ready for your next plating
project if you’ve got any great ideas of
things you think will look good plated
in either copper or nickel let us know
down in the comments and we might just
try it out
thanks for joining us for this video
today and remember to come gear yourself
up with hats shirts and other cool merch
at the king of random comm see you there
so now we have just so much stainless
steel does not like to stain
[Music]
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