[Jewelry making - Article 00146] - Re: [Orchid] Pickling plated metal

[celest]

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Jessica

    this is a tricky one, while I have never done this, I do work with
    stainless. I would worry about the plating dissapearing or doing
    other weird things when soldering. Avoid hard solder for sure,
    probably medium as well and avoid heating it for very long. You
    shouldn't have to pickle at all for the first soldering operation,
    but your piece should be clean and grease free so your flux can
    stick. I don't rely much on pickle but instead sand things clean
    whenever I can, but you can't do that because of the plating. If you
    have access to an ultrasonic and steamer that should get it clean
    enough to start. 

    Actually stainless steel is okay in the pickle but it usually takes
    stronger acids than the ones we use on jewelry to really clean it
    effectively once it gets dirty. To do anything with jewelry pickle
    you would at least need a wait of several hours and I don't know how
    good that would be for the plating. And don't do it with other items
    in the pickle since a few kinds of stainless could cause the usual
    steel copper plating reaction (most won't). Then you could also end
    up with copper plating on top of your gold plating if you weren't
    using fresh copper free pickle. 

Celeste
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