🚀 go-pugleaf

John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote in message news:<C3ZlrNAMHlv9EwHc@jmwa.demon.co.uk>...
> I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard Steven Walz
> <rstevew@deeptht.armory.com> wrote (in <3dbe394e$0$22477$8eec23a@newsrea
> der.tycho.net>) about 'old thread Re: DIY Soldering iron tips', on Tue,
> 29 Oct 2002:
> >Hmmm, I wonder if you can plate or re-plate the copper ones with iron 
> >using a DC supply a nail and ferric chloride in water that we keep 
> >around to etch PCB's??? 
> 
> AIUI, it is unexpectedly difficult to plate iron. The plating solutions
> normally used are quite complex: iron tetrafluoroborate is one salt
> used. I would expect that a ferrous salt, rather than a ferric, would be
> appropriate, but it may be that hydrolysis prevents proper working. 
> 
> A Google search shows that the process of iron plating copper bits is
> 'proprietary', and very little information is openly available about
> iron plating of anything.


maybe I'm mistaken, but it at least sounds quite straightforward. Put
the copper bit in a glass tube, held up on glass, put scraps of iron
in the tube, pass flammable gas thru the tube, and heat the iron
pieces. The iron evaporates and lands on the copper bit, while the gas
prevents it oxidising.

Or an arc involving iron might be a quicker way to produce the iron
vapour.

But for one's own use there's no need to iron plate, copper tips work
OK. And when they get burnt and pitted, as copper does, a minute with
a small file renews them, again and again.

I've got a couple of old Solon irons here that its effort just to get
copper bits for, let alone an iron plated one. Despite their obvious
antiquity they still do very nicely for heavy slobbering work. Noah
would be proud :)

Regards, NT