A New or improved Frocess for driver Plating.
Year: 1899

page_text: Date of Application, 27th Mar., 1899-Accepted, 22nd July, 1899
A New or improved Frocess for driver Plating.
I, RICHARD FIEDLER, of 57, Birkenstrasse, Berlin, in the Empire of Germany,
Director, do hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner the
same is to be performed to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement:—
This invention relates to an improved process for plating metallic objects in a cold
state with silver in which all the preliminary work hitherto required is dispensed
with and the various manipulations are condensed into one operation only.
As already known a metallic layer can be transferred to another metal but in order
The means
to be closely united to it the latter must have an entirely clean surface.
hitherto mostly used for silver plating therefore absolutely require that the object to
be silver plated be previously cleaned. This cleaning process is lengthy, the objects
being rubbed either with petroleum or with benzene, then washed in water then
brushed with a mixture of water, quick lime and chalk and then once more washed in
water, care being taken to see whether the so called grease spots have completely
disappeared. Instead of treating them with petroleum or benzene, they can be first
treated in hot potash lye or soda lye or in potashes or soda and afterwards be treated
as described. After all this the object is now only prepared for the actual process of
silver plating to commence.
Contrary to the above all these manipulations are entirely dispensed with in the
present process which commences with the actual silver plating without any previous
preparation of the articles to be plated. The principal new technical feature and in
practice exceedingly important, advantage is that instead of several separate prepared
bath solutions and the like which can be made only by an experienced professional
man, a single manipulation only is required whereby the desired result is immediately
obtained.
In this process a solution is used which at the same time cleans and silver plates
the article and contains such ingredients as can fulfil these two purposes. A solution
for such a purpose is made for instance as follows:-

page_text: dull layer is always produced on spots previously bright, which, for again rendering
them bright must be polished, whilst, by the present process a bright layer is given
to bright spots and a dull layer on dull spots of the article treated.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of this inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is:-
1. A new or improved process for silver plating articles of metal in a cold state in
which the respective objects are cleaned, scoured and silver plated at the same time
by being rubbed with a cloth or the like saturated with a silver solution capable of
dissolving or absorbing dirt and grease.
2. A form of the silver plating process described in Claim 1 in which the silver
depositing solution consists of about 15 parts of fused chloride of silver, about 150
parts of ammonia, about 30 parts potassium tartrate, about 300 parts of whitening,
about 60 parts of cyanide of potassium and about 0.5 parts of zinc powder mixed
together and heated.