Nickel Plating

It's not rocket science...plating plants are all over the place. I wonder why she wouldn't tell you where her source was?

I'd have to agree with Moonraker's response. Plating business are all over the place. I would seem to believe the items are foreign made.

The following is in my humble opinion and some may disagree.

Over the past few years, I've seen tons of stained glass coming from Asia that is sold at very reasonable prices. A lot of it you will find being sold via internet auctions, Wally World and home building centers. However, in my opinion, the workmanship / craftsmanship is typically not very good with these pieces. The soldering is usually pretty sloppy and the glass just doesn't have the nice luster as seen in high quality glass like Spectrum, Bulls Eye, etc. A good soldering job on stained glass will have a nice round bead found throughout the piece. This is something you won't find on mass produced work coming from Asia. The glass is usually slapped together very quickly and the workmanship is poor.

Stained glass pieces such as lamp shades or panels that contain may individual pieces of glass take a lot of time (hours)and effort to put together. Someone who takes pride in their work isn't going to let go of a piece for bargain basement prices like the foreign made pieces. Time is money, money is time. Your feelings that items were made elsewhere are probably correct.

John

Nickel plating is one of the easiest plating processes to use and is easily done at home. Talk to "Caswell" and get one of their electroless nickel plating kits (about 50 pounds UK). You may find this more easily through the custom motorbike trade (they're always useful people to talk to about plating).

Nickel is a hard process to do well electrolytically, but fortunately the electroless process works well for it. You mix up a bucketful of the kit's supplied chemistry, clean and prepare the piece well then simply immerse it. There's no need to supply electricity at all.

The chemistry is complicated and is not available outside the kits for anything less than ridiculous quantities. You'll not have much luck trying to make your own kits up, so buy Caswells (even if you _are_ an industrial chemist with good access to chemistry, unless you're in the plating trade itself)

Gold is a nightmare to plate because of the cost tied up in the plating solutions. If you really want it done, then talk to a manufacturing jeweller and have them do it.

Just look in the Yellow Pages under "plating," plenty of them in all major cities. Keep in mind that the people doing the plating cannot, will not, plate zinc as it spoils their chemicals. Also, if you use cames: do not putty until after the plating is done as putty also screws up their chemicals. Brass ("gold") plating tends to tarnish easily (finger prints etc.). Pricing is usually by the batch - whatever fits in their tank so save up your stuff. Some people will take small pieces to fill up tank space and give you a deal that way. Yup, sure looks nice and the lpating also encapsulates the lead so you won't have exposed lead concerns. Good luck, Bart.

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