§ 140 Alkaline Coppering Solution
Coppering Base Metals. — It is often desirable to coat lead, zinc, pewter, iron, etc., with a firm and uniform layer of copper preparatory to gilding or silvering. If copper or brass articles are soldered with soft solder it is found that the solder does not become silvered or gilt along with the rest of the material, but remains uncoated and of an ugly dark colour. This defect is got over by giving a preliminary coating of copper.
This is done in an alkaline solution, generally containing cyanogen and ammonia. The following method has succeeded remarkably well with me. The receipt was taken originally from Gore’s Electro-metallurgy, p. 208. A solution is made of 50 grms. of potassium cyanide (ordinary commercial, say, 75 per cent) and 30 grms. of sodium bisulphite in I.5 litres of water. Thirty-five grammes of cupric acetate are dissolved in a litre of water, and 20 cubic centimetres of the strongest liquid ammonia are added. The precipitate formed must be more or less dissolved to a strong blue solution. The cyanide and bisulphite solution is then added with warming till the blue colour is destroyed. This usually requires the exact amount of cyanide and bisulphite mentioned, but I have not found it essential to entirely destroy the colour.
The solution contains cuprocyanide of sodium and ammonium (?), which is not very soluble, and this salt tends to be deposited in granular crystalline masses on standing. However, at a temperature of 50° C. the above receipt gives an excellent coppering liquid, which will coat zinc with a fine reguline deposit. Brass or copper partly smeared with solder will receive a deposit of copper on the latter as well as on the former, and, moreover, a deposit which appears to be perfectly uniform.
In using the bath the anode tends, as a rule, to become incrusted, and this rapidly increases the resistance of the cell, so that the current falls off quickly. The articles should be scratch-brushed and plated for about two minutes with a current density of about ten ampères per square foot.
As soon as the deposit begins to look red the articles are to be removed and rebrushed, after which the process may be continued. About five minutes’ plating will give a copper deposit quite thick enough after scratch-brushing to allow of a very even gilding or silvering.
Aluminium appears to be fairly coated, but, as usual, the copper strips after soldering. Iron receives an excellent and adherent coat.
I do not think that the formation of a crust upon the anode can be entirely prevented. According to Gore, its formation is due to the solution being too poor in copper, but I have added a solution of the acetate of copper and ammonium till the colour was bright blue without in any way reducing the incrustation. If the solutions become violently blue it is perhaps as well to add a little more cyanide and bisulphite, but I have not found such an addition necessary. The process is one of the easiest and most satisfactory in electro-metallurgy.