Homage Forum

Another quick update:



Bevels and edges finished.

Now front and back need their surfaces ground and then the cleaning and plating begins.

I‘ll build another jig or two to make the pins. I didn’t get them consistent enough on the protos.
That’ll be one for the tip and one for the bending.

Great job!

looking forward to mine

Me too

And just when I thought I'd not be getting a knife edge buckle for love nor money...

Nice work, indeed!

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One more update... not the one I wanted but nevertheless I find it important to also document when things don’t go as planned. I had set myself the goal to finish the buckles by today. This didn’t work out. Somehow my plating solution went crazy. I have five buckles plated and all came out differently. The first two were matte and grey after which I added some acetic acid to spice things up a bit. This didn’t work out at all, the third one‘s all spotty. I thought evaporation and maybe too much acidity so I added some destilled water after which things looked better but still way off the results I got from a fresh electrolyte.
I might also have contaminated the solution, I don’t really know...

What I‘ll do now is set up a fresh batch of electrolyte and refinish the previously plated buckles. I am really sorry this is taking longer than I anticipated.

I‘ll take some pictures of the bad platings for reference, once I‘m able to stop banging my head into the wall.

Sorry to hear that you've had a problem with the plating process. Never done it so I cannot actually be useful and offer useful advice - so I will shut up now

I hope the next batch works out better. These things happen, but it doesn't make it any less of a PITA.

After having my wife’s family of six over for five days and getting some time off of the subject, I finally found the culprit!





It wasn’t the electrolyte at all... stupid me grabbed the wrong degreaser from the shelf. I unknowingly switched frome acetone to lighter fluid. The latter will degrease nicely but is insoluble in water. This I used to rinse in the ultrasonic which produced an emulsion that stuck to the buckles like mayo to french fries. The stench of the acetic acid covered everything else so I didn’t even smell the difference...

What a mess! No wonder the plating wouldn’t take.

Back on track now, updates shortly...

Nice!

Cant Wait