Bluing
 

Anyone know if you can blue over the top of nickel plating?

Hi Ron,


No, not at all. In order for bluing to take,and to take properly, you need bare fresh metal. Bluing won't even take over body oil, such as finger prints.

Bluing is rapid oxidation (rust), nickel won't rust.

Ron

No. Nickel plating forms a non-porous surface that bluing will not react to. The plating must be stripped off before you can blue. Another possibility if stripping the nickel is not an option would be a coating such as gun kote. The downside would be the thickness of the coating on top of the nickel may affect certain tolerances. In those cases you would have to sand down the coating and hope the proper clearances are achieved.

Rbrooks45 -

I personally have no experience with the removal of nickle plating from steel. However, if you do a search with www.google.com you will find there are two ways to do it: (1) with chemicals which are dangerous and require special precautions because of noxious fumes; and, (2) using a reverse electrolysis procedure.

As a suggestion, it might be worth checking with a motorcycle shop that does plating of motorcycle parts. They will probably be familiar with reverse electrolysis since they are experienced with plating motorcycle parts.

And everything written above about the importance of close tolerances is especially important.

Good luck with your project.

Good Advice... visit a plating shop for advice... the electrical method is best.

I have had real good luck with Caswell's MetalX stripper: http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/metalx.html

They say that it needs to be heated and agitated to work, but I simply dunked the parts for a few days and it worked just fine. I guess it would work quicker if you heat it, but it's way easier to just leave the part in it for a while. It left some black residue that could be brushed off easily and some parts with thicker plating had to be dunked twice, but it was a very painless (and odorless) procedure. Best of all, it didn't etch the metal.

Thanks all for he information. Ilooks like I will have to do some moe research but the best advice sounds like let a pro do it.:cheers: