COPPERY, SHINY and CURVY.......

[xylstra]

ELECTRO-FORMING (also known in the trade as "Electro-Deposition") is that arcane industrial process by which those shiny, sensuous curved copper cylinder/head jacket-covers are formed integrally attached to their corresponding cylinder-liners/combustion-chambers of automobile and not least, water-cooled aero-engines using only electricity and chemical solutions. The process secrets were tightly held and guarded by those wizardly practitioners who turned out spectacular pieces of workmanship, unassailable in their detailed intricacy and certainly, could never have been economically fabricated by relying on old-fashioned 'black-smithing' techniques using rolled sheet copper. These wonderful creations appeared right from the beginning of the 1900's and not even mass-production press-tooling and jigs would have come close to achieving this level of precision industrial artform.
I'm well acquainted with all the general principles but these are only a thin veneer of the deeper intricacies as practised by the individual craftsmen and their specialist fabriaction shops. i would like to discover their 'secret' recipe ccokbooks, their special in-process techniques; temperatures, timings, pH levels, voltages, currents, etc, etc.....
Does anyone have any of this information, perhaps from old period journals, specialist university texts, etc, etc......
All answers, please........

 

[riggerrob]

I suspect that the electro-forming process developed from electro-plating nickel or silver or gold onto baser metals. Gold-plating is common on low-end jewelry while nickel, cadmium, zinc, etc. plating are often used to inhibit corrosion on steel components.