Brush Plating

Q. Hello. I brush plate. I want to plate steel but I need to level the steel. It has pitting on the surface. Will copper strike fill the pitting before I plate on top? Thanks ... please help.

A. The real question here is how bad is the pitting? Light rust, iron oxide and mild pitting is usually removed by pickling and/or light abrasion. If the pitting is more severe, you may have to remove a significant amount of material to restore the finish prior to brush plating.

Remove pits entirely or at the very least, polish and blend to clean the metal and open up pits so that cleaning, etching and plating solutions can work. If light hand sanding doesn't work, try grinding, grit blasting, polishing, burnishing to restore the base metal.

Copper Strike is not a "thickness building" coating, to fill a pitted surface a heavy "build" bright acid copper would work better.

Best of luck.

Randy Taylor