Knights of Columbus Sword

The drag

The back of the sword.

The front of the sword. Hmmm...should have rotated that pic....it looks kind of odd upside down like that.

This is what it looked like the process of being put together.

A closeup of the quillions. So much imagery...the dove flying over the world, the broad arrow and acanthus leaves. Very pretty. All that detail was a devil to plate since the high spots would capture all the molecules in the solution, and the only way to get in deep was to overplate it, and polish off the frosted high spots, and replate. Not easy, especially since this entailed at least three and sometimes four successive electroplatings, polishings, electrocleanings, and replates. Nickel plate is really sensitive to voltage....but temperature does not seem to matter as much as it does with gold. Gold, ya gotta have a special preheated bath of hot distilled water to get the workpiece up to temperature....nickel just needs the right voltage. Of course, that voltage changes as the solution evaporates and gets stronger.....what works fine on day one is over kill on day eight. It took by estimate around forty five hours to strip all that plating off the pieces, polish, electroclean, repolish, re-electroclean, electroplate, re-polish, re-electroclean, re-plate and repeat as necessary. I think there are still some thin spots in the plating still. Oh well...gotta call it "done" sometime.

Oh well, if it was easy, anybody could do it.