Plating a gaurd from scratch

[quint]

Hey guys so I was reading thru "The Complete Metalsmith" which I got a while back with an anvil I bought. Pretty good book for alot of metal smithing stuff. Anyways I was reading about using something like copper for instance and a form painted with conductive paint hooked up to a power source like a charger and emersed in a form of electrlite to essentially plate a form. The metal moves from the parent metal to the form you painted and adheres to it taking on the shape you made which is later burned/melted out leaving the metal that transferred.

I have never tried this and am curious how thick of a transfer you can get and if it is something that could be used to make say a gaurd or maybe a ferrul of types. Not sure how brittle the metal is after the process and what not.

Thanks.

 

[sunshadow]

You can get a pretty thick buildup by electroforming (extended duration electroplating) with copper, but it will not be strong. I experimented with electroforming copper back in the '80s, good for coating a nonmetallic object so it can be goldplated, not good for building structure

-Page

 

[quint]

Thank you Page. Good to know saves me some experimentation.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Yeah, I used to make things like pinecones, starfish, and even flowers into metal jewelry by electroforming. It is not strong. It also takers a BIG rectifier setup. Some of the chemicals used are pretty deadly, too. ( cyanide compounds)


If you want to make a guard or fitting from scratch in an odd or fancy shape, what you do is cast it. You make a slightly oversize ( about 110%) wax model and then cast it into metal by the lost wax process. Al te detail of the wax will end up in the metal guard or fitting. This is commonly done in Japanese knifemaking and for the fittings on fantasy swords/knives.

 

[seanp]

The transfer that can be achieved can be quite thick. I saw some experimentation done with electroforming back in college. As others have said, one of it's main drawbacks is that the result was structurally very weak after the wax base was melted out. Although the plating was around 1/32" - 1/16" thick, it was brittle and could be broken with mild manipulation. Some other drawbacks were that the original detail blurred as the plating grew thicker, and it took a very long time to obtain that thickness.