(Cycles thru suppliers)
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(Cycles thru suppliers) |
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Letter 4125
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Funny, I have seen chrome plating kits in motorcycle mags. One long ago for 25 bucks. Recently for more but I can't remember where or how much. I want to plate the slides in Amal carbs. I am sure that this would improve their reliability. If you have any info on who would do this, please let me know.
p.r.k 
- g'ville, Florida
PRK,
To answer your question of who would do it for you, plating is a jobshop-oriented industry, and you should be able to find plating shops who will plate your carburetor parts in your yellow pages or right here in our Jobshop Directory.
Yes, you probably once saw plating kits for $25 (today it's more like $75) but these were not chrome plating kits.
If you wish to investigate entry level electroplating, contact a supplier of brush plating equipment and small systems like the site's supporting advertisers Brooktronics, GoldTouch, LDC, or Sifco. But if you spend some more time at this site, reviewing letters from earlier posters with similar interests to yours, you'll see why we urge caution and investigating the regs before you buy the chemicals. Good luck!
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 Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
Raymond J of Holyoke asked about a home plating system. Did any one answer him ? If so what is the answer? I want to chrome plate my auto parts and will be 6' L x18" W
James D
- Sylacauga, Alabama
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Second of two simultaneous responses +++ I am curious how well these home brush-based chroming kits. In particular, I have an old 1970's bicycle with chrome forks and rear stays, and chrome lugs. The chrome is almost intact, but there are lots of sand-sized rust specs in places. If I can clean off the sand-sized rust specs, what will be the result of chroming using one of these home kits ($30 from JC Whitney, etc.) I am not looking for a perfect job, I'm looking for something that looks good at 5 feet and protects the finish so it doesn't rust anytime soon. Donald G
+++ James, brush plating and minimal tank plating is not impossible; we mentioned and linked some suppliers already. But you seem to be speaking of an automobile bumper or some other very big copper-nickel-chrome plated item, and this would be a huge undertaking both in how much you'd need to learn to apply all the layers, and the effort of plating such a large item with a tiny stylus and double A batteries. Donald, I don't think JC Whitney offers one anymore, but there is an under-$70 tin-zinc system available from The Eastwood Company: Click on the link to go to Eastwood and look around. They even have a movie of the system. Ours is an industrial site where people typically spend between 5,000 and 50,000 times as much for a plating system. We're not trying to talk you into or out of a $70 investment. But quality plating with a real plating outfit is hard. Quality plating with a toy can be a bad joke. To chrome plate James' bumper with a plating cell like the kits you refer to, would require thousands upon thousands of AA batteries. Your job is smaller, but look up Faraday's Law and figure out how many hundreds of batteries you would need. And then you still have the issue of preparing the substrate so that your plating won't peel off, the fact that it's not really chrome and it won't match, etc. Our concern isn't whether you spend $70, but we don't want to tempt you out onto a slippery slope that can pollute the land or possibly beset you with huge fines. Good luck!
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 Chromium Plating, Weiner & Walmsley  Hard Chromium Plating, Robert K. Guffie  Electroplating Engineering Handbook, Lawrence Durney  Water and Waste Control for the Plating Shop, Kushner & Kushner |
I use a home kit frequently to chrome aluminum pieces. Just have to treat it first - remove the oxide layer and apply a layer of zinc - I use a zincate solution.
MW Jansen
- Southern California
This is just a comment, you can ignore it, but I don't think you
will be able to based on the NUMEROUS posts in the past.
This site DEFINITELY overstates dangers of home plating, I personally
believe the reason is that if everyone found out how EASY it is to
plate at home, the commercial shops would lose, LARGE...including
yourselves.
I have been plating at home for years now, no problems. I find that
there are dangers to EVERYTHING that a do-it-yourselfer must be
careful of. Your attitude on this subject is "Don't get into
woodworking at home, you could cut your hands of what with all those
power tools." or "Don't get into painting at home what with all those
fumes"
Honestly, RUBBISH!
How about doing us and yourself a favor and start posting educational
responses to peoples questions and drop the 'tude.
Go ahead, blast me too. Oh yeah, I do take my waste to proper waste
management facilities. Any "SHOP" can make mistakes as easily as a
home do-it-yourselfer.
Jim M
- Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Jim: we are happy to print your opinion, that's what a public forum is for. Here on this site is all the space you want, free of charge, to tell people anything you want from what you've learned in your years of plating at home.
But you are right that I won't ignore your posting; I'm the site host and my job is to respond to postings not to ignore them. But I don't own or manage a plating shop, never did, never will; and your claims of ulterior motive just paint you as a petulant adolescent.
This site includes thousands of pages of information for students, plating book reviews, links to plating educational societies and training sessions, a calendar of events of where you can attend free plating lectures, Mil and ASTM plating standards, addresses of free plating libraries, and tens of thousands of highly detailed responses to plating questions and problems. We never censor postings (except ads and ad-hominem remarks), so please share your plating experience instead of whining that we're not doing enough.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
YES I AGREE PLS POST EDUCATIONAL RESPONSES ABOUT CHROME/GOLD PLATING JUST LIKE ANY THING ITS DANGEROUS..YOU AUTA SAY DON'T DRIVE A CAR YOU MIGHT GET IN A ACCIDENT..IF THE MARKET FOUND OUT ABOUT THE PROFITS THEY MAKE THEY WOULD LOOSE $$..I'VE BEEN PLATING GOLD FOR OVER 1 YEAR NOW WITH NO PROBLEMS NOW I'M EXPANDING INTO GOLD..WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR COMMENTS..FOR ANY ONE INTERESTED IN CHROME OR GOLD PLATING YES YOU CAN DO IT IN HOME THEY ARE MAKING MORE AND MORE SYSTEM FOR THE HOME OWNER..GOOD LUCK CAUSE I'VE HAD IT..AND ITS NOT JUST ME..!!
tyrone b
- Louisville, Kentucky
Tyrone: This isn't the Hotel California; you can leave any time you like. But you, too, are welcome to tell people how to do electroplating at home. We'll give you all the space you want and it won't cost you a dime. So get to it -- or is your posting just vacuous bitching?
Your analogy that our warnings are similar to telling people not to drive because they might get in an accident is a great one, thanks! The government requires that every driver be trained, tested, and licensed; the government requires that every vehicle be registered, inspected, and insured. If you don't comply, you'll be fined or even jailed. And cops are constantly watching to see if you do something out on the road that endangers your neighbors.
Similarly, the government requires training, testing, and licensing of all plating shops and their employees. Operate without the registrations, the discharge permits, the testing of bath surface tensions, the ampere-hour logs, the waste accumulation records, the manifesting, the annual hazwoper certification, or without advising your neighbors of the materials that you have on hand (Community Right-To-Know law), and you are subject to fines or even jail time. I know two plating shop managers who did hard time.
Yes, you can probably get away with driving without a license or insurance. And in my experience as well as your own, you can probably illegally operate a small plating business and stay below the radar. And some of the regulations do not apply if you never sell a plated product or your plating service. But if a neighbor child contracts cancer, for any of a thousand natural reasons, and her parents find out that you were chrome plating in your garage, God help you.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
Chrome plating in your garage!!! Cover ups and
conspiracies!!!
I was born into a custom chrome plating business. I worked there as a
young teenager. I'm in my mid fifties now. Custom chrome plating is
all I have ever done. I run the business. I know every aspect. I have
done everything. Metal stripping, polishing, bead blasting, cleaning
and activating for plating, cyanide copper plating, acid copper
plating, nickel plating, chrome plating, customer relations,
reporting to various agencies (EPA, DNR, local sewer districts, Etc.)
All accounting and payroll. I know I am missing a few things, but I
think Ted will understand.
And now Tyrone says its a big cover up to deny people a chance to make millions in their garage. Oh Lord! Maybe we need a Canadian disposal place that doesn't require permits and testing as inferred in an earlier comment. To think all the years wasted when I could have done it in my garage and made millions!
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Frank DeGuire |
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To MW Jansen: how about some details. I want to touch up a couple
spots of chrome sheet metal.
volts, amps, source of solution what are anode and cath materials
temp? etc
GF Kron
- Novato, California
+++++++
Hi to those of you who will answer questions and not whine. I was wanting to replate the pot metal parts from my 68 El Camino what's the best way to prep the parts with moderate pitting and should they be treated as an aluminum part in the plating process? Last but not least if you're not willing to eat it or drink it then treat it as a nasty substance be responsible. Dumping it down the drain goes right back into your drinking water. Thanks
Michael Walters
novice - Water Gap, Pennsylvania
Hi, Michael. I am not confident when someone says "potmetal" that the parts are actually zinc diecastings as opposed to aluminum diecastings (they look just about identical although aluminum is significantly lighter). But a 1968 car probably used zinc diecastings rather than aluminum, so zincating probably isn't necessary.
It isn't easy to fix those pits because the porosity absorbs water and plating solutions, thus causing contamination; plus the absorbed water or gases can come back as steam when the parts are heated and that causes holes and blisters. But the usual way to deal with mildly pitted diecastings for restoration is to copper plate them in cyanide copper plating solution and "mush buff"; this means basically to "mush" the soft copper plating into the pits by/while buffing. After the pits are pretty much filled with copper you can go on to more copper plating, then nickel plating, then chrome plating. Good luck.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
Could I electroplate with a AAA (1.5 volts)?
Joe Wilson
hobbyist - Virginia Beach, Virginia
For the purposes of a grammar school or early high school science project, yes you certainly can, Joe. Please see our FAQ: "How Electroplating Works". Beyond that we'd need details of what you hope to do, though. Look into Faraday's Law because plating is energy intensive and that AAA battery is only going to be able to electroplate a barely visible layer of metal on an item the size of a quarter before it's exhausted.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
I have no experience with plating, but I have a great deal of experience with OSHA and EPA. The thing that would scare me the most about plating in my garage and disposing of the hazardous waste is this. Even if I did all the paperwork it requires to order, store and use the materials, then to dispose of the materials as hazardous waste, the thing that would not let me sleep another night I lived is the "Cradle to Grave" rule by EPA. Once you dispose of the material, the paperwork has to be maintained forever! And should the container you dispose of this material in should leak, then you the disposer are responsible and legally liable. The cost of a cleanup could be millions, and the fine is $25K per day until it is cleaned up. And you have to pay to reseal the junk, restore the junk and that means everyone else's junk stored with it. I just want to know, since I am just starting, what a fair price to pay for plating. I am restoring an old car and I want to plate the bumpers etc. What would be a fair price?
Gus Weaver
hobbyist - Harrodsburg, Kentucky
Hi, Gus. The biggest cost of plating, especially replating old stuff, is labor. It would be fair for a plating shop to charge you about the same amount for their time as a plumber or mechanic would -- maybe just a little more because of the cost of material and because a plating shop's equipment costs more than a plumber's equipment.
So the real issue is how long will it take, and this will depend on the condition (how much buffing and polishing is required) and on how high quality the job is. Reworking a single old bumper involves far more labor than manufacturing from scratch a new mass-produced one. So, unfortunately, it will cost at least the same as a new bumper.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
Ted is on the money with everything he has said. I began looking around for a home based chrome plating kit...thinking it was that easy. It costs about $500 here to strip, repair and rechrome a vehicle bumper. In my wisdom, I thought I could do it for next to nothing. I came up against ALL the hurdles Ted has mentioned. I paid the $500 and have a fantastic bumper and no headaches. I am impressed with your site and knowledge Ted...keep up the good work mate....Peter
Peter Carey
- Perth, Western Australia
Thank you the kind words, Peter! A quick aside --
Some people just love working on their boats. They are happy as clams, beer in one hand, scraper in the other, day after day. They almost cannot comprehend that others of us are scraping our boat only out of necessity, that we despise this maintenance, and our only interest is in getting it over with.
I think that part of the "friction" here is this: someone will say they're trying to electroplate something and I may read into it that they just want the darn thing fixed, and aren't familiar with the fact that plating jobshops are readily available to do it for them. Meanwhile the enthusiasts who enjoy hobby plating are convinced that the person would love to electroplate it themselves and we are stomping on their potential joy :-)
I especially appreciate your posting because it implies that you didn't particularly like the idea of electroplating yourself, and you tried it only to save money or because you didn't know that plating jobshops could do it for you.
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
April 8, 2008
I would like information on how one would go about starting a
chrome plating business on a small scale.
Any information would be helpful.
Maynard D.Tuttle
- Cherryvale, Kansas
Hi, Maynard. I think you'll find our preciously mentioned Introduction to Chrome Plating will give you a feel for what chrome plating is about.
To open a restaurant without ever having worked a day in one would be a risky proposition, but at least you've spent hundreds or thousands of hours in hundreds or thousands of restaurants in your life, so you have acquired some good info about how they run and what's important. You don't have that advantage when it comes to plating shops though. So I would strongly urge people to work at least a while in a plating shop before volunteering to be eternally responsible for the toxic chemicals you will need to buy.
If that is impossible, then at least join the National Association for Surface Finishing (nasf.org) and attend the local monthly meetings and the annual Sur/Fin convention, take a 2 to 4-day introduction to plating through NASF or Kushner Plating School, read a few of the most important books, and subscribe to the monthly journals to understand what's going on. Good luck!
Regards,
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
Hi I can give you a good answer to this. I purchased some paint called Mirrorchrome from the company ALSA Paints. I have never in my life seen a chrome paint that actually shines like chrome until now. It took me several tries but finally after the fifth one I figured it out.
You prep your item just as you would for any paint job then spray on a Black gloss, I used an over the counter Base clear black. Clear coat it, then comes the tough part, wet sand it all the way to 4000 grit then polish it to a mirror shine then just spray on the chrome it takes about 15-20 min to flash over then polish it with a lint free cloth then let it cure for an hour then spray a coat of the clear over it. I did find you have to use a base clear clearcoat all others put a haze over the chrome. Anyway check out Alsa and see their videos; it does work.
Scott Lancaster
- Norridgewock, Maine
Hi, Scott. We normally discuss things in generic terms here rather than bringing specific company names into it because, with the anonymity of the internet, there is often a race to the bottom when people compare brands. Plus, we really can't ask the site's supporting advertisers to pay for testimonials to their competitors :-)
But Alsa helps make this site possible, and chrome-like paint is, for the amateur, a great alternative to real chrome plating. We thank you for providing so much exact detail on what worked!
Regards,
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Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey |
March 15, 2009
Can I do some Chrome and Brass plating at home?
I am restoring a 43 ft. 1958 boat. Lots of bright work to cleaned up and some of the parts are hard or impossible to replace. I have sent some things out for professional plating, but the cost can be daunting. I am a chemical engineer, so I appreciate the environmental and other operating costs of the professional shops. I was just wondering if there are any replating kits and instructions that I might use safely at home to do some of the small plating work. Thanks for you help.
Bill Relihan
hobbyist, conservator - Apollo Beach, Florida
March 19, 2009
Hi, Bill. As you can see, we appended your letter to a similar thread, rather than starting over and risking no replies due to reader fatigue with this issue. We have an "Introduction to Chrome Plating" on line here that will help you understand what is involved. I could not suggest real chrome plating at home because it requires toxic and carcinogenic hexavalent chromium. The best brass plating is cyanide based, which is an extremely powerful poison, but you may be able to find a non-cyanide brass plating solution that is good enough.
Regards,
Ted Mooney
finishing.com
Brick, New Jersey
March 17, 2009
hi my name is matt, i am very much into building cars and motorcycles and just about anything custom. i have never had anything plated and i understand the prices can be pretty high, i am just wondering if there is any type of metal plating i can do at home in my garage for my self, i actually have a set of wheels that are hard to find and would like to try to plate my self, (the chrome is peeling on them) i would also like to plate a lot of other parts under the hood of the Camaro i am building, its a 1979 Z28 and i am trying to completely restore it, and there is a lot of things i would love to chrome plate and don't want it to cost me a arm and a leg. i don't mind to labor at all i found a kit for 899.00, this is close to the kit i found, the difference is the kit i found is 6 gallon instead of 4.5, i would like to know also how much plating will a 6 gallon kit make and do you have to have any kind of license or permit to buy the kit. i understand it is an art but i do like learning and would really love to learn the trade without spending over a 1000.00 dollars, i would also like to know if there is any kind of newer technology that would make it safer and easier for some one with no experience and the finish i am looking for with the automotive parts. i have always been a quick learner and believe i can do it. There are also a lot of books that say how easy it is to do it at home and i don't believe that and am kind of sketchy about them. any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks matt. ps this is the kit i found, like i said its exactly the same except bigger 6 gallon not 4.5 Gallon Kit
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6 x 6 Gal Plating tanks with lids matt mcdonald
March , 2009 Hi, Matt. We appended your inquiry to an earlier thread so you can conveniently read a number of different perspectives. Regards, opt
August 7, 2009 I would like to apply precious metals to animal skulls.
Iam going to use bettles to clean the skull.Now I am
currently trying to find a soft,low melting point, easy to
work with alloy that will stick to the bone. This alloy
would also be the cathode in the eletroplating process. I
understand your concers with liabilty in regards to plating.
Any other thoughts? Matt Bostwick
August 15, 2009 Hi, Matt. Please see our FAQ on plating flowers, plants, and animal skulls. There are other ways to metallize than to melt metal onto something, and I think you'll find them better for this purpose. Good luck. Regards,
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