I have a number of brass instruments that are nickel plated. Nickel plating is great because it doesn’t tarnish and it doesn’t tend to corrode, so it always looks shiny. It was super popular until about 50 years ago. A few players are allergic to it, which is probably why it’s been replaced by silver plating over the years.
I was decently surprised when I received a breaker bar ordered online that had a prop 65 (cancer/reproductive harm) warning on it. Not something I'd seen on most general tool steels.
I had to look up the cause, and it was because it used a high Nickel alloy for the tool steel.
I had not associated Nickel as particularly harmful, but... it's relatively nasty in regards to human health (particularly when inhaled in even small amounts).
So I was curious and scrolled down to page 81 in the linked document on this post - they do a fairly thorough walk through of the potential harms, and it's worth reading for the folks who do this at home.
I've copied the relevant regulatory warnings from the document here:
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¹Nickel salts (e.g., Ni sulphate, Ni sulphamate) carry the following human health hazard
classifications under GHS: (Global Harmonized System): Acute Tox. 4 (H302: Harmful if
swallowed and H332: Harmful if inhaled), Skin Irrit. 2 (H315: Causes skin irritation), Resp.
Sens. 1 (H334: May cause allergy or asthma symptoms or breathing difficulties if inhaled), Skin
Sens. 1 (H317: May cause an allergic skin reaction), Repr. 1B (H360: May damage fertility or
the unborn child, developmental effects), Muta. 2 (H341: Suspected of causing genetic defects),
Carc. 1A (H350: May cause cancer by inhalation route only), and STOT Rep. Exp. 1 (H372:
Causes damage to respiratory tract through prolonged or repeated inhalation exposure).
Nickel metal carries the following human health hazard classifications under GHS: Skin Sens.
1 (H317: May cause an allergic skin reaction), Carc. 2 (H350: May cause cancer by inhalation
route only), and STOT Rep. Exp. 1 (H372: Causes damage to respiratory tract through
prolonged or repeated inhalation exposure).
Most of those dangers are true for most kinds of metal powders or soluble metal salts.
What is specific to nickel is that much more people, especially women, are allergic to it, in comparison with other common metals. Therefore surfaces covered with nickel or nickel alloys with high nickel content are not recommended for contact with skin.
I do this a bunch at home, my setup has also migrated to work. Simple solution made with vinegar, salt and sodium laurel sulphate, then a couple of cheap nickel electrodes. Run current through both to make the nickel acetate, then you're good to go.
This handbook is thorough, but not of much use to any novice just looking to do some nickel plating. It's not hard to do though, and certainly something you can do at home. I've done this for a set of custom steel brackets I needed for some project¹.
This Youtube video is useful if you want to start from scratch:
The trade offs are more complex than that. Depending on your application chrome might be more or less durable. Chrome is more toxic from what I can tell. I used to work at a factory that did chrome platting (technically the next building over - I never went into that building but it was the same company), and so I had to get special safety training before I was allowed to work. Mostly my training amounted to we have our own sewer system for just the chrome plating work, it can handle chrome salts but regular sewage will clog it and cause a toxic release - use the regular city sewer for everything else.
Chrome is shinier. (Possibly shinier than silver, but I don't thing I've seen a comparison.)
It's a good thing that we replaced most of the people-facing platings with plastics, because those are some nasty metals. The one metal that we still use everywhere is zinc, that isn't a big issue.
But nickel in particular allows for a lot of possibilities on the plating color, including some very-high absorption blacks. (And I think all the high-absorption for solar radiation, low absorption for thermal radiation coatings are nickel based.)
I like the idea of adding extra anode wires to within cavities to get better coverage that this document suggests.
My favorite type of nickel plating for home scale is nickel acetate. It can be as simple as a 6v lantern battery, a nickel guitar string, and some vinegar (though guitar wires make terrible electroplating electrodes since they break and fall (something this document says can be mitigating by using a titanium basket)).
We thought copper salts were benign until we recently started linking them to dopamine neuron death. Too much of anything absorbed into the body is rarely a good thing.
I think it's tempting to get into kitchen chemistry but you can very quickly find yourself playing with things that should not be in your home. Having a baby has made me question a lot of my home experiments and made me realize how sloppy I was.
Very small amounts of nickel are beneficial for the bacteria inhabiting the gut.
Great amounts that are absorbed into the blood would do no good. For many people, mainly for women, nickel may be an allergen, which is why nickel is not recommended for jewels or piercings or anything else that stays in contact with the skin.
Maybe not a project for the kids but any adult wearing gloves should be just fine. I've been having fun painting graphite lubricant in urethane onto PLA 3D prints and nickel acetate electroplating them.
Would using Nickel plated copper wire help prevent galvanic corrosion of carbon steel when grounding a fence using copper wire? Or would the copper coated with Nickel still act as a cathode making the fence anode??
I have a number of brass instruments that are nickel plated. Nickel plating is great because it doesn’t tarnish and it doesn’t tend to corrode, so it always looks shiny. It was super popular until about 50 years ago. A few players are allergic to it, which is probably why it’s been replaced by silver plating over the years.
I was decently surprised when I received a breaker bar ordered online that had a prop 65 (cancer/reproductive harm) warning on it. Not something I'd seen on most general tool steels.
I had to look up the cause, and it was because it used a high Nickel alloy for the tool steel.
I had not associated Nickel as particularly harmful, but... it's relatively nasty in regards to human health (particularly when inhaled in even small amounts).
So I was curious and scrolled down to page 81 in the linked document on this post - they do a fairly thorough walk through of the potential harms, and it's worth reading for the folks who do this at home.
I've copied the relevant regulatory warnings from the document here:
-----
¹Nickel salts (e.g., Ni sulphate, Ni sulphamate) carry the following human health hazard classifications under GHS: (Global Harmonized System): Acute Tox. 4 (H302: Harmful if swallowed and H332: Harmful if inhaled), Skin Irrit. 2 (H315: Causes skin irritation), Resp. Sens. 1 (H334: May cause allergy or asthma symptoms or breathing difficulties if inhaled), Skin Sens. 1 (H317: May cause an allergic skin reaction), Repr. 1B (H360: May damage fertility or the unborn child, developmental effects), Muta. 2 (H341: Suspected of causing genetic defects), Carc. 1A (H350: May cause cancer by inhalation route only), and STOT Rep. Exp. 1 (H372: Causes damage to respiratory tract through prolonged or repeated inhalation exposure). Nickel metal carries the following human health hazard classifications under GHS: Skin Sens. 1 (H317: May cause an allergic skin reaction), Carc. 2 (H350: May cause cancer by inhalation route only), and STOT Rep. Exp. 1 (H372: Causes damage to respiratory tract through prolonged or repeated inhalation exposure).
Most of those dangers are true for most kinds of metal powders or soluble metal salts.
What is specific to nickel is that much more people, especially women, are allergic to it, in comparison with other common metals. Therefore surfaces covered with nickel or nickel alloys with high nickel content are not recommended for contact with skin.
Homer Simpson went blind from eating nickels, maybe you missed that one
I do this a bunch at home, my setup has also migrated to work. Simple solution made with vinegar, salt and sodium laurel sulphate, then a couple of cheap nickel electrodes. Run current through both to make the nickel acetate, then you're good to go.
This handbook is thorough, but not of much use to any novice just looking to do some nickel plating. It's not hard to do though, and certainly something you can do at home. I've done this for a set of custom steel brackets I needed for some project¹.
This Youtube video is useful if you want to start from scratch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-PtnwtOR24
1: I could have used stainless steel instead, but bending, drilling, and tapping stainless steel is a lot harder than doing this with regular steel.
Is it true that nickel plating is less expensive than chrome plating, but chrome is more durable? Is that the trade off?
The trade offs are more complex than that. Depending on your application chrome might be more or less durable. Chrome is more toxic from what I can tell. I used to work at a factory that did chrome platting (technically the next building over - I never went into that building but it was the same company), and so I had to get special safety training before I was allowed to work. Mostly my training amounted to we have our own sewer system for just the chrome plating work, it can handle chrome salts but regular sewage will clog it and cause a toxic release - use the regular city sewer for everything else.
Chrome is shinier. (Possibly shinier than silver, but I don't thing I've seen a comparison.)
It's a good thing that we replaced most of the people-facing platings with plastics, because those are some nasty metals. The one metal that we still use everywhere is zinc, that isn't a big issue.
But nickel in particular allows for a lot of possibilities on the plating color, including some very-high absorption blacks. (And I think all the high-absorption for solar radiation, low absorption for thermal radiation coatings are nickel based.)
I like the idea of adding extra anode wires to within cavities to get better coverage that this document suggests.
My favorite type of nickel plating for home scale is nickel acetate. It can be as simple as a 6v lantern battery, a nickel guitar string, and some vinegar (though guitar wires make terrible electroplating electrodes since they break and fall (something this document says can be mitigating by using a titanium basket)).
Now that's something to try. Kitchen scale electroplating. But nickel acetate sounds bioavailable.
We thought copper salts were benign until we recently started linking them to dopamine neuron death. Too much of anything absorbed into the body is rarely a good thing.
I think it's tempting to get into kitchen chemistry but you can very quickly find yourself playing with things that should not be in your home. Having a baby has made me question a lot of my home experiments and made me realize how sloppy I was.
Very small amounts of nickel are beneficial for the bacteria inhabiting the gut.
Great amounts that are absorbed into the blood would do no good. For many people, mainly for women, nickel may be an allergen, which is why nickel is not recommended for jewels or piercings or anything else that stays in contact with the skin.
Maybe not a project for the kids but any adult wearing gloves should be just fine. I've been having fun painting graphite lubricant in urethane onto PLA 3D prints and nickel acetate electroplating them.
most nickel electroplating stuff is bad news - even by electroplating standards.
Would using Nickel plated copper wire help prevent galvanic corrosion of carbon steel when grounding a fence using copper wire? Or would the copper coated with Nickel still act as a cathode making the fence anode??
Nickel is almost as noble as copper, so it would not change anything.
For the galvanic protection of steel, like in marine ships, electrodes of zinc, or better of magnesium, are suitable.
What happens when there are small areas where the coating has worn through?
Is there any equivalent for electroless nickel plating ?