Caswell plating experience?

[PRG]

Caswell vs Eastwood

Howdy Chaps,

12 years ago when I was doing the resto on the machine in my sig, I only knew Caswell as the difinitive source for British fasteners through their British Tools & Fasteners/ side, not the plating part here. Had exceptional luck with Eastwood's copy cad system and thought let's just move it up a notch and do an entire batch rather than one piece at a time.

Ordered the system with the fish tank pump and all the fixn's. No doubt a good setup but it sits unused in the attic to this day. If you want really quality Cad with all it's poisonous beauty, best to send it off to Billmark.

But, for one piece at a time, it's hard to beat Eastwood if you keep in mind what the plating composition really is, something not much different that what's on that old galvanized bucket sitting in your garage. When it ages, it turns a dull grey.

[DanM]

Caswell electroless nickel

Since my first post, i've used the Caswell stuff on 4 cylinders and all my small parts and found it to be easy to do and came out nice. Haven't run the cylinders yet, but they plated beautifully.

The hardest part is getting the parts very clean. It takes a lot of blasting in the cabinet to get every surface clean. I also baked the parts at 350 to drive oils to the surface, used a water based degreaser (ZEP), blasted them.

I didn't want the nickel in the bore, so made up a set of plugs for the various openings.

Small parts get the same, and in some cases buffing them up to get a better shine.