Removing Zinc Plating (2024)

I have some 4130 tubing which is plated with what I think is Olive Drab colored Zinc.

Anyone know what solution will remove this plating? Phosphoric Acid?

I want to put a uniform finish on these parts with sand paper or scotch-brite, but the coating takes forever to remove with this method, and I'm never really sure I've gotten it all off.

QB

I use hydrochloric acid to get zinc off of screws that I want to blacken. It is cheap and sold at building supply stores for use on masonry.

Larry

hydrochloric acid will take that stuff strait off ...that's if you are talking about the rainbowy gold electroplated stuff .

other zinc plating ..galvanising.the dull grey stuff ..you can polish on a buffing machine to a very good chrome like finish.....finish is short lived before it goes dull again and has to be sealed with lacquer or waxed regularly.

if using hydrochloric ...make sure you neutralise with bicarb or it will rust like crazy.

good source of hydrochloric is masonry cleaner .....look out for one that contains over 15 percent .

all the best..mark

Ah, for once I have the actual perfect answer. Go to your supermarket (or old school hardware store if necessary) and buy a can of Red Devil lye. Make up a weak solution of lye (in water) and toss your parts in overnight. It will not only eat the zinc, but any rust on your parts will vanish as though by magic.

This isn't theory, I did this recently for some old caster bases I was using in a project. I removed the zinc to get the rust off easily, and so I didn't have to deal with any zinc fumes when welding, and because the project will live inside.

GWE

homemade,

do you know how they get that zinc chloride flux to get all nice and gooey, so that it sticks to what you are soldering?

Olive Drab is probably Cad #3 (Cad1 is silver, Cad2 is gold). I remove Cad plating with muratic, I use one of those stainless food trays they sell at Fart & Smile.

Click to expand...

Smart & Final? That one took me a minute, but my wife got a kick out of it...

aboard_epsilon mentions neutralizing with bicarb. Can anyone elaborate on this process? Is this something I do after the acid dip?

Thanks again for the great info..

QB

Anchorman

I do not know how to make it gooey, but would like to, I think. probably discusting.

In the meantime, how do you do the Quote "thing"?

Not sure about others, but I put [*quote*] at the beginning & [*/quote*] at the end & just cut & paste what I need in between that.

(The *'s aren't supposed to be there, I just added those to make it show up without actually quoting. hth)

homemade,

you can also do the "full reply form" which gives you a whole bunch of options. so you don't have to type out all the code. also allows you to get email notifications, etc.