For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:31:30 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

I've got a couple Johnson Silver Minnows that have the silver finish
worn off in spots. Might be good for that.
Can you get the silver scented?
The boron nitride might be applied to a lawnmower blade edge after
sharpening. Cost effective?

--Vic

wrote:
For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

You have to be careful combining metals in a marine environment. If you
don't know what you are doing you could be creating a battery and ruin
stuff rather than protecting and beautifying it.

On Oct 17, 11:49 am, jim wrote:
wrote:
For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

You have to be careful combining metals in a marine environment. If you
don't know what you are doing you could be creating a battery and ruin
stuff rather than protecting and beautifying it.

Scented plating, now that is a new one on me.
I never considered plating on fishing equipment. Are you sure the
plating isnt simply a silver colored paint? I am sure it cannot be
real silver which would tarnish too easily.
If you look at a lot of marine stuff, you will find that it is often
brass with a bright nickel coating. Yes, you would have to be careful
of the galvanic series so you do not cause corrosion.
One of my many schemes has been to develop a way to prevent props from
fouling because most antifouling coatings do not last long enough to
be useful. I noticed that when I have the shaft zinc in place, a
bronze prop fouls. Without the zinc it fouls very slowly. This tells
me that the nearby zinc is suppressing Cu ions from going into the
water and protecting the prop from fouling. Simply copper coating the
prop will not work if you use a zinc. What I need is a copper-zinc
coating with an underlying insulating coating on the prop.
Too many interesting things to do and not enough lifetime.

On Oct 17, 12:01 pm, wrote:
On Oct 17, 11:49 am, jim wrote:



wrote:
For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

You have to be careful combining metals in a marine environment. If you
don't know what you are doing you could be creating a battery and ruin
stuff rather than protecting and beautifying it.

Scented plating, now that is a new one on me.
I never considered plating on fishing equipment. Are you sure the
plating isnt simply a silver colored paint? I am sure it cannot be
real silver which would tarnish too easily.
If you look at a lot of marine stuff, you will find that it is often
brass with a bright nickel coating. Yes, you would have to be careful
of the galvanic series so you do not cause corrosion.
One of my many schemes has been to develop a way to prevent props from
fouling because most antifouling coatings do not last long enough to
be useful. I noticed that when I have the shaft zinc in place, a
bronze prop fouls. Without the zinc it fouls very slowly. This tells
me that the nearby zinc is suppressing Cu ions from going into the
water and protecting the prop from fouling. Simply copper coating the
prop will not work if you use a zinc. What I need is a copper-zinc
coating with an underlying insulating coating on the prop.
Too many interesting things to do and not enough lifetime.

I bought an old sputter system off e-bay with 8" sputter guns and RF
supplies and quartz thickness monitors for $1000. It has a 3'
diameter chamber. it is missing a large enough difussion pump but I
know I can scrounge one. I have not put this system together yet.
Sputter would be much better for such an app than e-beam cuz it coats
curved surfaces better although we do have a turning system in a very
small sputter system for even better uniformity. TiN is interesting
cuz it goes down very smooth and is very hard AND is electrically
conducting AND looks like gold.
The semiconductor industry uses TiN as a layer between copper and
silicon because it adheres very well to Si whereas Cu does not. thye
put it down in thickness of only 50 angstroms and it is seriously
beautiful that thin. It is a wonderful purplish iridiscent color
changing coating, always draws "Oooooh, Aaaaaahs" from people on large
wafers.

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:01:19 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

What I need is a copper-zinc
coating with an underlying insulating coating on the prop.

The key to painting props is in the primer. There is a product
called "PropSpeed" that some people like:

http://www.propspeed.com/

http://lists.samurai.com/pipermail/t...er/113238.html

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:01:19 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Oct 17, 11:49 am, jim wrote:
wrote:
For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.

You have to be careful combining metals in a marine environment. If you
don't know what you are doing you could be creating a battery and ruin
stuff rather than protecting and beautifying it.

Scented plating, now that is a new one on me.
I never considered plating on fishing equipment. Are you sure the
plating isnt simply a silver colored paint? I am sure it cannot be
real silver which would tarnish too easily.
If you look at a lot of marine stuff, you will find that it is often
brass with a bright nickel coating. Yes, you would have to be careful
of the galvanic series so you do not cause corrosion.
One of my many schemes has been to develop a way to prevent props from
fouling because most antifouling coatings do not last long enough to
be useful. I noticed that when I have the shaft zinc in place, a
bronze prop fouls. Without the zinc it fouls very slowly. This tells
me that the nearby zinc is suppressing Cu ions from going into the
water and protecting the prop from fouling. Simply copper coating the
prop will not work if you use a zinc. What I need is a copper-zinc
coating with an underlying insulating coating on the prop.
Too many interesting things to do and not enough lifetime.

They have copper zinc coatings. They are called brass plating.

Casady

wrote in message
...
For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.


While twiddling my thumbs at work I often daydreamed about doing stuff like
that.
We built several TiN coating machines (reactive sputtering) for various
industries. The problem was that the geometry of the contracted systems
really didn't accommodate things like boat props. But, not that I didn't
try.
I did a bunch of steel hardware parts (nuts, bolts, cleats, etc.) and
gave them away to people at the dock.
They, of course, assumed the parts where gold plated.

One of the systems we built is used (or was used) by GM for "gold plating"
the metal hood emblems. Wasn't gold ... it was carefully controlled TiN.
GM was very critical of obtaining the proper color and hue. Also did a
bunch of plastic badges, etc.

The problem, I think, would be cost. In order to get the uniformity
required on different geometries, the vacuum system and components would be
very expensive.

Eisboch