I've de-greased all of the nuts and bolts from my M20 and now they're ready for the next level in our relationship.

In my past bike restos, i've been able to take them to the wire wheel and then to a polisher, but I don't want the polish.
Some things I will send to the cad plater, but I need a nice finish on the rest.

I've seen some beautiful nuts and bolts from some of the restos on this site. What do you guys do?

Some almost look vapor blasted to give it that nice dull sheen.

I put all old, rusty but still usable nuts and bolts in a jar with a 5% phosphoric acid solution; gives them a dull, black, rust-resistant colour
And a lot cheaper than cad plating
Hans

email (option): viaconsu [at] planet'dot'nl

30% molassas will do the same and you can feed it to the horses when you have finished

email (option): wariron@tpg,com,au

... Or Coca Cola

email (option): viaconsu [at] planet'dot'nl

I sent all mine to be dull chromed with everything else. I told them I didn't want things polished, it had to be matt. So he dull chromed just my kickstart lever without polishing it, just to show me what he meant. It looked awful, with loads of rust pits etc so parts do need to be polished. The problem then is they tent to over polish things which causes irreparable damage. On the nuts and bolts he just touched them up on the linishing belt to get rid of rounded corners or rust damage. This, unfortunately made some nuts and bolts no longer look hexagonal and the correct spanner no longer fits. You can see the fine belt marks on the bolt heads so it would have been a good idea to lightly polish the heads.

email (option): horror@blueyonder.co.uk

Vinegar works as well,then you can sprinkle it on your chips.

The best way to remove rust is by electrolysis, with a battery charger. It will eat the rust without attacking the base metal.
Washing crystals are the electrolyte and you new a scrap of steel as an anode. Look it up on the net.
If you have a container big enough you can put a whole tank in it or a car.
Vinegar or citric acid will remove light rust
Transmission fuild works better than WD40 to unfreeze rusted parts

How do you guys finish the nuts and bolts? I want to give it the proper finish while protecting from future rust.

I get mine cad plated, an entire bike worth of them costs around $75. They do all the prep work and it is a good memory exercise trying to figure out where they all go after they are sent back.

That is a puzzle, and you alway have some left at the end with no idea where they went. With phones having cameras on then these days, I took pictures of levers etc with their nuts and bolts. This help identify the smaller ones.

email (option): horror@blueyonder.co.uk

After degreasing, remove the old residual cadmium plate by dipping them in an acid wash of 20% battery acid and water. They will "fizz" for a few minutes and will be bare metal when that stops. This is important since wire brushing or dry blasting will atomize the cadmium, and breathing atomized elemental Cd causes cancer and kidney failure. This is not a trivial risk. See:
http://www.lifescript.com/health/centers/rheumatoid_arthritis/alternative_treatments/zinc_articles/cadmium_toxicity.aspx

Rusted fasteners are best cleaned by hydrolysis as described in Darren's post. Badly pitted steel will never look right if plated and I usually use those fasteners inside mudguards or other places they will not be seen.

After stripping I de-burr them with a power sander. The Eastwood expander wheel, www.eastwood.com/expander-wheel.html, works really well for this. Then I blend the sanded bits with a brass bristle wire brush and bead blast. An old 250ml plastic bottle with a screw-on top works well for this: cut off the bottom and tape on some window screen and cut a hole in the screw cap just big enough to fit your blaster nozzle. Put a small handful of fasteners in the bottle. invert it over the blaster gun in your cabinet (screen end up) and the fasteners will dance in the beads and airstream. 30 seconds of blasting works well for each lot. Then they are ready to plate.

If you have never done any electroplating a really good resource for home-shop kits is Caswell Plating. They have a non-toxic dull zinc process they call Copy Cad that's fast and fun:

http://www.caswellplating.com/electroplating-anodizing/zinc-plating-kits/copy-cad-reg-and-zinc-plating-kit-1-5-gal.html

I used this for a while but found the color and durability of the plated parts a little off the real thing. They may have improved the kit since I last used it.

For about 6 years I have been Cd plating with a proper cadmium cyanide bath and sacrificial Cd anodes that I bought online from a firm in Florida, Samson Gold Plating. Shipping was inflated by hazardous material charges and I sincerely doubt it can be shipped to the EU. I don't see my kit listed on their website any longer. Putting 20ml of battery acid into the bath will release enough cyanide gas to kill anyone who enters the building.

One more tip: commercial platers use conventional copper plating as a filler for minor pits and scratches on parts, much like modern high-build primer for painting. Copper plate will build and build if plated long enough and can easily be wet-sanded and buffed to restore a finish, like on a pitted KS crank. It's also very useful for restoring dimensional loss to the outside of bushings and bearings. One WM20 gearbox cover I saw had the steel KS bush copper plated to increase its OD after it had spun in the cover.

Caswell has an online help site with lots more info, and they sell copper, nickel, chrome, zinc kits as well as anodizing and stripping kits. They also feature olive drab chromate and blackening solutions that don't require an expensive rectifier. Check out electroless nickel as a simple and safe way to plate fasteners and dynamo bodies.

Also, it's unhealthy to aerosolize old chrome and nickel plate by grinding or dry sanding. Chrome dissolves in the acid bath. Nickel is much tougher, as we all know, and needs to be reverse-plated or dissolved in one of Caswell's nickel stripper products.

I apologize for the length of this post. The more one learns the more one realizes what they don't know. If it would help I can expand it with a few photos and some more detail and post it on the technical section of the website.

Jeff Bandola, Rhode Island, USA.

email (option): jjbandoo@aol.com

Thank you for the input, Jeff. Very thorough!

I bought a small sandblasting cabinet from Machine Mart - best thing I ever purchased. Cleans small to medium parts perfectly. Cost around £120, but there are clever people on here who have built their own.

I also bought a dull nickel plating kit for around £70 - works brilliantly.

There's quite a hefty up-front cost, but if you do enough parts it works out fairly decent value.

I use bead blasted stainless steel fasteners and fittings where ever possible as a replacement for parts that were originally cadmium plated ...

The ones that can't be obtained off the shelf I make myself or have them made by an engineering shop...

The (even fewer) that are not possible to replicate cost effectively I have cadmium plated after stripping, cleaning up carefully by hand and bead blasting. This last process ensures the plated finish is consistent on all pieces....

This of course does not include parts that would have been dull chrome plated originally...For them the process is broadly the same apart from the final finish applied....

If you can't clean up a fastener/fitting without substantially altering it dimensionally then, in my opinion, it should be replaced...

If you intend to use the bike seriously and want the fasteners to remain good for the maximum time then go for a durable finish rather than a cheaper/more easily applied one...unless you like doing things more than once and/or are a stickler for originality....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com