[TheForge] Yellow Cad plating

[Ries Niemi]

By and large, Cadmium is rare and expensive- not the kind of thing you 
are likely to run into in your average scrap pile.
The exception, which is what I believe Phlip is talking about, is 
yellow cad plating.
This is done by the same plating houses that do zinc plating. Not hot 
dip zinc galvanizing, but zinc plating.
Yellow cad is a finish most commonly found on electronics housings and 
speaker baskets.
For some reason, many speaker baskets of medium price range are yellow 
cad plated 18 ga steel.
Cheaper ones are just zinc plated, and more expensive ones are usually 
cast aluminum.
A lot of auto parts get yellow cad plated as well.
But since plating works best on uniform thickness pieces, the vast 
majority of yellow cad plated stuff you are likely to run into are 
sheet metal stampings.
There are also yellow cad plated bolts out there- these would be the 
likely danger items for smiths to get involved with-
So my advice is dont try  to forge shiny gold colored bolts- they are 
most likely cad plated.
Occasional aircraft stuff is cad plated as well- you see some oddball 
stuff at Boeing surplus.

Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist

http://www.RiesNiemi.com