Chrome plated 1950s kitchen/dinette tables & chairs -- restoring & protecting

A. Try to disassemble your objects and then immerse metal parts in solution of 47,5 gms sodium gluconate [on eBay or Amazon], 47,5 gms citric acid [on eBay or Amazon] , 4,9 gms tartaric acid [on eBay or Amazon] , 0,1 gm nonionic detergent / 1-10 lit water (according to USPT4,264,418). Solution can be used hot or cold.
After at least 10 minutes you can rinse parts with plenty of water, then you can dry them with paper towels and hair dryer [on eBay or Amazon]. Polish and protect with Everbrite [a finishing.com supporting advertiser] or any other good metal clearcoat. Hope it helps and good luck!

A. That solution is very good for chromium or nickel plated objects. Can be sprayed on objects too. Repeat process several times if needed. Good luck!

A. Hi Jason. We in the plating industry hate to see letters like yours where the plating isn't proving satisfactory.

If you look at O.E.M. chrome truck bumpers, you know that really high quality chrome plating can easily withstand decades of service under conditions far more challenging than your tables and chairs face.

But the unfortunate fact is that while all chrome plating may look about the same, it is actually of highly varying quality to satisfy the anticipated service condition. We would have to get technical, and talk about micro-cracking, and duplex nickel and layer thicknesses to explain fully, but it appears that the plating on your chairs and tables was designed for indoor use, not the salty beach service condition they find themselves in.

Chrome polish [on eBay or Amazon] and frequent waxing ⇨
may be the best you can do. Chrome plating is highly 'non-wetting' so it's difficult to reliably clearcoat chrome, but try automotive clearcoat, or perhaps one of the specialists here about can suggest a lacquer that will work.

A. Chrome plating will tend to rust when exposed to the outdoor environment. This is due to the fact that the chairs may not have been plated with a process optimized for the environment you have put them in (e.g. use of duplex nickel, microporous chrome, etc.). You are correctly removing the corrosive materials by cleaning the chairs and can slow down or eliminate the corrosion by clear lacquer coating the chairs over the chrome with an aerosol material. A second approach would be repeated applications of old fashioned paste wax. When purchasing new chairs, you would want to find ones with a plated and powder coated finish or ones which are just powder coated.

Hope this helps Gene

A. Beyond cleaning it with metal polish and keeping it waxed, there isn't much you can do yourself. The items can certainly be re-chromed by a plating shop. Press the 'Jobshops' button at the bottom of the page to find some shops.

But be aware that there is a tremendous amount of manual labor involved in stripping old parts, buffing them, and replating them one at a time. You will surely tell yourself that you could buy new legs for less if you could find them and you'd be right. When an O.E.M. plates new legs, one operator can chrome plate hundreds per hour with automated equipment; when old parts are refurbished it can take hours just for your parts :-(

It is very do-able, but expensive due to labor time. Figure an hour or hour and a half work on each chair, and that a plater needs to charge the same as a plumber or auto mechanic. If you think that cost represents highway robbery, buy new chairs instead. If you think it's reasonable considering the value of the chairs to you, it's no problem. Good luck!

A. We restore 50's chrome and Formica dinette sets. We get these sets with chrome that is very corroded. The well-produced chrome chairs have the capability to look close to the original condition. Removing the rust is the hardest part and involves a lot of time and work.

The process that has been successful for us is to use a good chrome polish [on eBay or Amazon] and a very fine grade of #0000 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon]. Once the chrome is looking good again a coat of wax is applied.

The process takes about 1/2 hour per chair but lasts about 6 months before they have to have a touched up again. The good news is that the touch up process only takes about 10 minutes.

A. Hi, Pamela. Items like this consist of steel tubing which was plated with copper, then nickel, then chrome. The plating is now perforated in spots and you may be looking at blackened copper or rusted steel; there is no good way to clean bare steel to turn it back to chrome. The best you can do without replating it is to clean it with metal polish and very fine #0000 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon], then keep it well waxed to deter rusting.

A plating shop will probably encounter no particular technical difficulty in stripping this tubing, re-polishing it, and re-plating it -- many plating shops would be happy to do it for you. Just pick a plating shop from our Jobshops Directory here, or your yellow pages, and find one that offers nickel-chrome plating to the public.

The issue is that it is very labor intensive and will probably cost significantly more than you would like to pay. When the dinette set was manufactured, hundreds of identical tubes were polished and plated simultaneously on automatic machinery, so the labor cost was divided over hundreds of parts. When you need one set done, and it takes a craftsman the better part of a day, you can't expect him to work for less than what a plumber or mechanic would charge for their time. In other words it's probably going to cost several hundred dollars, and most people aren't interested unless the item has genuine sentimental value or replacements are unavailable.

Our Introduction to Chrome Plating will help you appreciate what it's about (and why it's costly).

You can buy chrome paint [on eBay or Amazon] from inexpensive to quite expensive and applied by a specialty shop. The more you spend the closer it will look to real chrome plating. But anything in a spray can is not likely to look much like real chrome plating. Good luck.

A. Sandblasting will leave a fairly rough surface and will remove or destroy whatever plating is under the paint.

A professional painter could likely do an OK job over a sandblasted surface, but if you don't want them painted...

The plater likely told you the truth, that it will be less expensive to buy new.

A. Hi, Carol.

It is not impossible, in fact not even difficult, to chrome plate those chair legs. The point that Jeffrey and the plater are making is that it is labor intensive, so it will be more expensive than most people might expect. Call some more plating shops until you find a couple who can and who want to do it. Just don't think it's a conspiracy when you can't get it done cheaply; it may take an hour and a half or two of labor per chair, and (obviously) platers have to charge as much for their time as mechanics or plumbers :-)

Best of luck.

Regards,

A. Hello,

My husband and I have been selling fabulous and unique 1950's era chrome dinette sets for many years now. We restore tables and chairs as needed and have always had exceptional results using the process of applying chrome polish to buff out areas after removing any rust or corrosion, albeit we tend to avoid any chrome in this condition. However, where needed we find that it just takes a lot of elbow grease to obtain optimal results restoring these wonderful tables, chairs and dinette sets to their original state.

A. Roxanne: chrome polish and elbow grease is an affordable and practical approach to removing the rust in many cases. But once there has been rust, it means the plating is perforated--and polishing it may make it look passable but doesn't repair it: it remains a high maintenance issue where only regular polishing and frequent rewaxing will limit the rusting. Although replating is quite expensive, that's the way to truly restore the set to original condition. Since you are in the business and thus may have reasonable production volume, you might want to align yourself with a local plating shop so that between you this option can be offered at a more reasonable price than individuals are encountering.

A. Hi Bob, with some searching we found them [double leg caps on eBay or Amazon] . But you'd expect that with today's 3-D printing that any and all such old plastic replacement parts should be readily available :-)

Luck & Regards,


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

A. Hi Janice,
I doubt that anyone stocks such a thing, but a metal fabricator can make it and a plating shop can plate it.

Alternately, talk to a company that does custom boating accessories. They make bent tubing like this all the time for T-tops, covers, ladders, etc., for boats. They probably will want to make it from electropolished stainless steel tubing rather than chrome plated tubing, but even professional chrome platers and electropolishers say you won't be able to see the difference (if you buy two legs, so the different materials are not attached directly together in plain sight, you certainly will never be able to tell the difference).
Luck & Regards,


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

A. Try 5% ammonium citrate (mixture of 50 gm citric acid [on eBay or Amazon] /1 lit water + add some ammonia [on eBay or Amazon], pH must be 3,5). Hope it helps and good luck!

A. In addition to Goran's fine suggestion, chrome polish will remove the rust, and wax will deter its return for a short while. But the purpose of the original chrome plating was both decorative and to keep the air from reaching the steel of the table legs. Once the plating is perforated, rust is inevitable. If the table is of value, real or sentimental, sending the legs to a plating shop for replating is the right answer. It's just expensive :-(

A. Take a piece of regular household aluminum foil, fold it two or three times for thickness, wet it with a little water and scrub away! Have a soft rag handy to wipe away the residue that you're removing and to shine the chrome.

I was skeptical when I first heard this idea, but decided I didn't have anything to lose except a cheap piece of foil. I cleaned up my 'new' retro table in no time at all. It was almost miraculous. GOOD LUCK!

A. Theresa,

I would try looking at a local sheet metal shop or a metal fabrication shop, they maybe able to steer you in the right direction or possibly even make you something up. Then you would probably need to have it rechromed -- again you would have to find a plating facility in your area. That's about the best advice I could give you.
Regards,

A. This site might be of some help.
www.barsandbooths.com/bandbmetalbanding.htm ⇩

A. Hi Theresa. To clean it, try superfine #0000 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon] and chrome polish [on eBay or Amazon] per previous responses. 3-in-1 oil would probably be fine, but I think WD-40 [on eBay or Amazon] would be fine too. I'm not quite understanding what you are painting since people normally don't paint the bottom side of tables, and I'm not sure if you are talking about the underside of the formica, or the bottom of chrome rails holding it together, but I don't see harm in it. I'd suggest the paint before the oil because you'll have a mess trying to paint anything that got oil on it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi cousin Judy. I hate to be a broken record but the truth is that chrome plating can be an outstanding corrosion resistant finish as can be seen on the chrome plated grills of virtually all current cars and the bumpers on trucks, and can withstand the worst that the weather and the roads can throw at them for decades.

But chrome plating will also be shiny when it's so poor that it already has barely visible rust as it waits for sale in the big box stores which are selling it for bathrooms (our Intro to Chrome Plating FAQ explains it all and includes close up photos showing the rust on bathroom fixtures for sale).

Unfortunately, the chrome on your dinette set is probably closer to the bathroom fixture chrome plating quality than the truck bumper plating quality. Regular application of paste wax to try to keep water and vapor off the chrome plating is probably your best bet.

Luck & Regards,

• Topic 12615 "Repairing/re-plating Chrome kitchen table legs"