Rechroming a Vic Pastushin Airtray / Ashtray

A. Hi Patti. Hopefully some plating shops will contact you. Or see our directory of plating shops here, which can save you a little search time because it includes not only what services they offer, but whether they serve the public or can only offer production scale industrial plating. Plating shops which do replating for vintage automobiles is what you are looking for, as this job is rather similar to hood ornaments and such on very old cars.

If you are interested in what is actually involved in chrome plating, you might find our "Understanding Chrome Plating" interesting, but an important point is this: general overall plating will not fill those pits. If they are small, what can sometimes be done is heavy copper plating followed by 'mush buffing' to try to force the soft copper into the pits (sometimes repeated several times); but if the pits are large, they actually have to be drilled out (enlarged) and individually soldered.

Your "airtray" van be saved, but the bad news is that it will be far from cheap to replate it; it will probably cost more than its worth :-(
So, if authenticity is not required, the alternative is to fill those pits with "body compound" and then have it painted with "chrome-look paint". These days chrome-look paint can look darned close to chrome plating. Good luck!

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey