Nickel Plating Kits - your recommendations

[JGundry]

Another good place for plating is Cal-Tron in Santa Fe Springs. They are used to doing guitar parts and do all of the prep belting and buffing for raw parts as part of the per piece price. I lucked out with prep buffing and plating. Locally there are two places that used to do buffing and plating for Gibson . But I have used Cal Tron in the past with good results.

Cleaning parts to be plated is more labor intensive that in used to be. Platers can no longer use carbon tetrachloride which pretty much made everything clean as a whistle after a dip. The prep buffing compound in particular is hard to get off and needs to come off before plating.

Slugs should not need to be deburred or vibro finished if you make them with an automatic screw machine.

[RedHouse]

For top quality chrome plating, there are one or two other metals involved. For instance, the best chrome over steel quality has a coat of copper first on the steel, then nickel, and then the chrome. The next level down would just be copper then chrome. A flash plating of chrome over steel is bound to break down and rust over the years. If Fender parts were triple plated, they'd look a lot better after ten years (five?).

It's worth considering getting a vibrating polishing rig if you're going to do a lot of small metal parts.

On the brass tailpieces that I have nickel plated by Van Nuys, we sand them to 320 grit to get rid of any extrusion or milling marks and deburr them. I think we pay about four dollars apiece for plating when we do a run of fifty of them.

No disrespect intended Rick, but it's not a simple menu like that.

Chrome over steel is "hard chrome" plating, hard chroming is not decorative, it is not visually appealing and is the kind of chroming done on crankshaft journals, bearing surfaces, and M16 bolt carriers and chambers.

Decorative chrome is chrome over nickel over base metal. It's not a simple 3-step menu, but for most guitar parts (except tuner gears and tremolo pivots) the "decorative" chroming is what happens. The nickel makes it pretty, the chrome makes it last.

The kind of Chroming on guitar parts is "decorative" chroming where chrome is deposited over nickel, over the base metal. Copper is used on metals which don't readily take the nickel (aluminum, plastic etc). Copper helps the base material take the coating, it fills-in voids and can appear to provide "the best" coating if the part was not prepped correctly. Copper is needed also when nickel doesn't natively adhere to the base metal (ie; Aluminum, Zinc/pot-metal).

This was not meant to yank your chain, but to clairify the different levels of plating for the average pickup winder. I'm an average pickup winder that has done my share of plating in a hotrod shop.

[magnetic sound]

I have a lot of experience with plating, anodizing, and ecoat as I service the power supplies used for these industries as well as manufacture them. I know many places around the U.S. which may do small jobs.

Barrel plating is mainly used for plating zinc and nickel on small parts such as screws, fasteners, etc. Larger pieces need to be racked. As stated before, if you do your own cleaning/polishing then you will save a lot of money. Prior to actually plating, the parts are immersed in chemical cleaners and usually an electro-cleaning tank. (the polarity of the anode and cathode are reversed)

T

[Bryan Jeppson]

Forgive me if this is hijacking the thread, but are there any similar kinds of worthwhile kits for goldplating humbucker polepieces?

[RedHouse]

Forgive me if this is hijacking the thread, but are there any similar kinds of worthwhile kits for goldplating humbucker polepieces?

Caswell has gold plating kits too.

[StarryNight]

i had a conversation with a friend just the other day about the shiney chrome plating that goes on for the Gibson re-issue Les Paul's and how it looks a little too bright and sterile. I assume chrome resists corrosion the best over time, but is there a way to "warm up" the look of chrome? Is nickel a warmer look? Is silver plating a rediculous idea? Great thread btw...

[Ronsonic]

Nickel is a much "warmer" look. Yellow highlights instead of blue. Nickel was standard for the vintage les pauls.

[RedHouse]

Nickel alone has a "yellow'ish" tint, where Chrome has a "blue'ish" tint.

FYI, nickel is the base coat for a chrome plate job. When you do a chrome plating job you first nickel plate, then add a thin layer of chromium over the top of the nickel, there is much more nickel than chromium on a chrome plating job.

The Caswell "Copy Chrome" is really kinda cool, it's like right between the two and seems to blend with either very well.