While doing a major shop cleanup, I came across an old container of KoolAmp
wipe-on silver plating powder. I recalled seeing a note about it recently,
recommending it as a protective (?) coating on copper tank coils.
I can recall using this stuff years ago to plate some copper PCB tabs before
gold plating was as available as it is now. One thing that I can recall is
that after 6mos to a year later what you had was very funky looking silver ,
vs. very funking looking copper otherwise. In view of that fact that the
coating it puts on is, at best, 10-20 millionths thick while the Copper skin
depth is the better part of one mil (1000 millionths) at 30MHZ, its
electrical value is nil. I believe that this stuff was intended to be used as
a medium between LAYERS of copper, such as in bussbar wiring in plants. If
you want to make a REALLY show-quality tank coil, here is the plan:
1. Buff it, shine it, whatever you can conjur up to make it look
extremely nice TODAY.
2. Take it to a small PCB fab shop in your area (there are always
several in any
large city area) and have them apply 5-10 millionths of Gold
plating. You can
typically get it done for about $50-$75. If they try to charge you
a lot more than that, it really means that they don't want to deal with you.
The actual gold cost here is well under $10 and the process is very simple.
3. (Optiona) Spray with some high-temperature varnish. The gold will
actually hold up pretty well, so this this might be considered overkill.
It would also make sense to mount it in a way that it could be easily
removed. You could then take it out every year or two and give it a good
polishing.
Eric von Valtier K8LV
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