At one time. I read here a member does it for living. Like to get in touch with him. Anyone know him?
Does anyone know who else does it?

Thanks, Sarge

That might be me. I work in a plating shop. We do chrome , nickel , black oxide , electopolish and more.

P.M. if you wish.

Do you do TiN (Titanium Nitride) plating too? Thanks for your time, BB

Nope.
One of the problems of doing different types of plating is to have the equipment ( tanks , anodes and chemicals) to do each type of plating. A large investment which only pays out if you have the work to justify the cost. We used to do aluminum anodizing , but not anymore as the calls for it dropped off , making it unprofitable.

A lot of plating work has gone overseas due to lower demand (cars don't have the chrome like they used to have ) , also handling some serious chemicals has major issues with environmental concerns which are overlooked in 3rd world countries. Plating shops are dying off in this country. Trying to open a new one is a serious uphill battle with regulations.


Fun fact - if you notice very carefully , several of The Godfather movies there are scenes of the characters in a plating shop. Nothing is said in the movies , but a plating shop is a great way to get rid of a body. The chemicals I use can completely dissolve a body , bones included.

I had the bumpers of an old Fairlane rechromed in about 2000 but I think that outfit folded up. Something to do with the EPA.

Full sized older car bumpers cost a fortune to get done today. My shop doesn't have very large tanks to do big objects like a car bumper. Nationwide there are some , but not very many that can still do that kind of work.

A car bumper can cost $1000-$2500 to get done.

A long time friend had a small electro-plating company, they did a lot of small work for the Franklin Mint and such. EPA closed down too.

It was close to $2000 for both if I remember right. I have a set of star wire wheels I'd like to get dipped sometime. My old bird dog use to love peeing on them and they got a little rusty

The chemicals I work with are pretty nasty. They range from stuff that dissolves chrome or something else with different chemicals to get nickel , zinc , copper and of course , ferric oxide aka rust. There is huge amount of work just complying to using this safely and cleanly. In my shop we use a regenitive process that recycles back the chemicals , saves huge bucks as some of the prices have just skyrocketed recently. I get this one chemical in a 55gal drum. Used to cost $800. Now $1450
We go through about 4 barrels a year. That's just one chemical for part of a process for one type of plating. We buy lots more of other stuff too. Just got 100kg of nickel a little while back , price has tripled.

As we have seen , tanners are in the same boat. Lots of chemicals and regulations. Not that I am against the regulations , but they are costly to implement , maintain , and stay compliant is very difficult and expensive. Tanners are closing up shop and the work is going overseas.

Plating and tanning are slowly dying out in this country , going away like the dinosaurs.

… we zinc phosphate our couplings

… outsource manganese.. tin and copper

If they are the real wire wheel type , I got bad news for you. They would cost thousands to get redone. Very difficult process. We don't do any car wheel replating as it requires special equipment and is difficult work even on an old school ' steele ' OEM steel wheel type wheels that look good with baby moon hubcaps when it is all chromed out.

Super Fund cleanup site near me where a plating operation was 20 years ago. It is on the outskirts of town. Residents were offered free hookup to city water and all refused. Go figure. Said they didn’t want a water bill. Lots of leukemia in that neighborhood.

Cragar, I'm restoring a '29 Model A Ford and the bumpers need re-chromed, as well as numerous other parts. I know it would be cheaper to simply buy new stock, however, I'm trying to keep it as much original as possible. This was my father's car and he had everything re-chromed in 1966. Does your shop do much work on Model A parts?

Thanks,
Butch

Unfortunately , we do very few car parts. Quite frankly ,we chase a lot of that work away. It is difficult to take most car parts and refurbish them at a reasonable price point. I get prospective clients all the time with Harley Davidson parts , first thing I ask is " does Harley still sell this part or someone else ? " It is cheaper to buy new if you can.

A used , vintage part has a lot of special concerns. Taking a brand new part and plating it with chrome it may go through over 20 different processes to completed finish product. A used , vintage item may need to go through an additional 15 processes to get to that level. That is time = money.

I've done things like a vintage Ferrari grille. Huge amount of work. The bill was over $2500. Worth spending the money on , because you can't buy a new one and a used one would require you to take out a second mortgage if you can find one for sale.

Teaser....these came in a couple years ago. I got some 'before' pictures but forgot to get the 'after' pics. This was just a clean up job followed with a deep polish job that made the brass shine like a mirror. Really sorry I didn't get the 'after' pics , they came out really nice.





I'm so sorry I didn't get the 'after' pics. They came out super nice.



I think it's really cool to work on something over 100 years old , respecting those who made this and are now long gone and dead. In their honor.

I ran a zinc plater years ago

We had a drycleaners in a neighboring town that caused a bad environmental clean up after it's closure years ago . A gas station too , that was leaking fuel from it's underground tanks. Big clean ups by bad business owners. We do things right where I work.

I have at my disposal , over 100kgs of pure sodium cyanide. Enough to kill my entire city of 80k-100k if I put it in the city water supply ( very easy to do ) . Cyanide is a very useful industrial chemical. Got to use it with great care.

I've done cleanup work (still do, actually) at both dry cleaners and gas stations, as well as other types of facilities. I've never done a plating facility, though.