Diy chrome plating?

[clintonnut 126]

An older man told me about chroming your parts very similar to electrolicis. He said if you took a chunck of a decent chrome bumper and hooked it up to a negative anode and hooked the positive anode up to the part you want chromed it woulx transfer the plating. If you want regular chrome you use a mix of water and muriatic acid(basically pee) and if you wanted black chrome you use phosphoric acid. Surrestions? Seems a little dangerous?

[Sparky-(Admin) 21,687]

Would it work? I have no idea but I bet the parts to be "chromed" would need a standard electrolosis treatment first to make sure their clean with nothing to contaminate the chroming process.

If its as easy as he makes it sound I wonder why the Harley guys on tight budgets dont do it . Or maybe they do.

Mike.......

[MikesRJ 552]

Here's a good chroming video:

[sorekiwi 761]

I havent used it, but Caswell sells a kit:

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/triple.htm

Not cheap, and I/ve seen some professional shops turn out some pretty bad chroming jobs too. So I think there's a little more to it than the pee process you just described.

I have tried a little Anodizing of aluminum at home which is a relatively simple process that also uses some nasty chemicals. These are some mandrels I made for installing bearings and seals in unidrive transmissions:

The one on the left was left clear, the one on the right dyed. Its a lot of screwing around though.

Caswell sells an anodizing kit as well as many other types of finishing processes'

[Kelly 1,030]

For a nice chrome job, the part being chromed needs to look about like chrome first, lots of work preping the part.

[btrrg1969 11]

Here's a good chroming video:

cool video , there are a lot of steps and work :ychain:

[Horse'n Around 22]

I know that theres a lot of prepatory work that needs to be done before plating with chrome. Back in the day when there used to be a lot of the good heavy chrome bumpers on vehicles ,the body shop I worked at used to send out damaged bumpers to be straightened and rechromed if the customer didnt want to pay for a new one or if a new one was not availiable. The driver that went around to the various bodyshops to pick up bumpers, Big Al was also the co owner of the plating shop we used. He told me that they would grind, polish and plate with copper then polish again and plate with the chrome. He might have said something about plating with nickle but I might be wrong about that. Those guys were miracle workers. They would take a mangled and twisted bumper and in a day or two it could come back perfect. Al was a super nice guy, I was right out of High School and he would take small parts like pulleys,brackets and master cyl covers from my 69 Charger R/T and plate them for me for nothing, he sure was a nice guy.

John

[VinsRJ 723]

The chroming process has multiple steps which need to be completed in the proper order and with attention to detail.

Now the real problem, the aftermath of toxic crap that is produced after chroming. #1 its a health hazard and #2 you just can't dump it anywhere, how many old school chrome shops folded and the land is so comtaminated just from natural causes of the process that nothing can be done with the land or building? And I'm not talking about the wacko's who dumped the afterbirth in the back yard of the shop...... :ychain:

[W9JAB 156]

wonder why the Harley guys on tight budgets dont do it

In the "old days" we used FRENCH CHROME = silver paint :ychain:

[rmaynard 15,780]

Check this out.

Bob

[Horse'n Around 22]

Wow that was impressive. I cant help but notice that he wasnt even wearing any gloves, respirator or any other form of protection. The result sure looked good on the video. I wonder how it holds up over time and all.

Thanks for posting that.

John

[rmaynard 15,780]

It's all water-based. There are several different processes, but think about it, how do they get chrome on plastic? Since it can't conduct, you can't do electroplating. Here is another video you all might enjoy. One of the biggest car collectors, Jay Leno, has a video on a similar process.

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/spray-on-chrome/1232328/

Bob

[MikesRJ 552]

This would be an outstanding process for the inside of the headlight bezels. Nice find!

I can see a whole slew of parts getting chromed on the next custom restore.

[clintonnut 126]

Im thinking of perusing the chrome process like they do on mirrors if im pleased with the results ill chrome my whole rj-35! I just need to know chemicals involved etc.

Charlie

[Don1977 604]

Even if you have the chemicals and polishing tools to do it right the problems you could have with the EPA it's not worth it. What you would pay to have it done by a good shop would be cheap to what the EPA could cost you.