Have you ever noticed that the color of the zinc and cadmium plating on new grade 5 and grade 8 bolts just doesn't look right on a traditional hot rod? I painted all the front suspension parts on my '32 gloss black and when I'm putting everything together, I keep noticing that the ugly bluish and goldish looking zinc and cadmium plating on the nuts and bolts just looks kind of ugly and too new looking. It makes it look like I'm putting together a swingset for kids to play on. For some things that don't require great strength, I'm using some chrome plated grade 5 bolts or some stainless steel bolts that I polish the heads to look like chrome. The bolts that are still zinc or cad plated look out of place. Black oxide coated bolts match a little better, but those black oxide bolts get rusty after a while once you get them wet a few times. The black oxide castle nuts on the tie rod ends look okay, but then the bluish zinc plated cotter pins look like junk. Maybe I'm just getting too obsessed with little details? Anybody got any good tricks to make new bolts look like they belong? Like paint the heads of them after ***embling them maybe?
Have you tried bead blasting them? Not so much that you remove the plating but just enough to knock the shine off. That leaves them a little dull. Which might be to your liking? I've blasted them lightly and then kind of buffed a little with steel wool. That will give them a not brand new look but should still have enough zinc to keep them from rusting.
A small ********y finishing machine should be able to wear off the plating after quite a few hours. I've noticed that leaving cadmium plated parts in my ********y tub for 12 plus hours eventually wears through to the base metal (in my case copper spark plug base gaskets). Of course until it wears off it makes the cadmium shinier.
If you're blasting/buffing them, you're taking all the plating off... its VERY thin, and in fact, if you just wait a few months, the bolts will likely look "old" without doing anything at all to them, as that phosphate plating is very difficult to maintain, and dulls quickly. Restorers coat plated parts with WD40 or the like in an attempt to keep it looking new, and its still a losing battle, as it deteriorates over time and loses its "shine". In your case, this is a good thing.
The gold cad plating and the silver zinc plating are tougher than you think when it comes to blasting the finish off. I don't mean blast the **** out of it at 100 psi with silicone carbide. If you use low pressure 40 psi or so, it won't blast the finish off right away. It will dull up nicely and make a nice finish that's not all bright and shiney, if that's what your after.
When I needed some new bolts to look old, I soaked them in a cup of Coca Cola for a day. It took the shiney off of them and left them slightly stained in the nooks and crannys. Give it a try.
makes me want to go get a can of coke! need to clean my insides....by the way, it works excellent for cleaning batteries too!!!
Yup, nothing like weakening a bolt for sake of style eh? Don't drill the top, you remove material that gives the bolt it's holding power. That's why allen head fastners need more meat in them to achieve the same torque without failure. Shawn
A friend of mine who ran demos for years had a way of getting away with tons of ****. He would bolt on stuff and then brush it lightly with battery acid. Two days later it looked like it had been that way for years. Maybe not the look you are going for.....
This''ll work as will grinding then brushing bolt heads with salt water. We build derby cars too... We generally spray undercoat cheater parts, then cover them with dirt. But I can't imagine going to this extreme to a fastener on a rod look "old". Cad plated Grade 8 bolts, my mainstay, look great as-is! Jan
Not sure if it's the look your after, but stumbled across an idea accideantally. I bought a bunch of cheap nuts and bolts for a gas tank cleaning project. I filled the tank up with the bolts and dumped a few bottles of CLR in. I really dug the look of the bolts as they came out of the tank.
Mannnnnn, and to think Im trying to make my rust look LESS rusty! What the hell was I thinking? Screw trying to figure out why my battery wont hold a charge, Im going to get a cup of coffee now so I can ponder how to get my paint to look more painty. Just messing with ya man! Use Time, like others have said.
I know where he's coming from. A new cad plated bolt on something old looks retarded. I sometimes wire brush them to just knock down the shine.
Yep! Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think his question was how to make them look old and rusty. So, all you fake patina haters can relax. I think he was just looking for something not so shiney. I know where he's coming from, I don't particularly like the look of the bright shiney zinc bolts on some things. I don't think it's all that weird to pay attention to small details like the finish of the bolts. I've been guilty of nitpicking the little things plenty of times. Small details like that can really make a big difference to the overall look of a car. No I'm not a fake patina freak or a gold chainer.
Yeah, I wasn't looking to make my bolts look old and ****py like some kind of fake "patina". I just didn't like how they stood out like a sore thumb against the black paint with that bluish silvery look to them. Most suspension parts on older cars I remember taking apart were plated with kind of a dull black oxide coating. Yeah, probably over time, they'll get dull on their own. I was working on the front end today, and realized an easy way to take the glare off certain bolts was to have some black "anti-seize" compound on my fingers while I was ***embling them. It kind of takes the galvanized wire fence look off the bolts. I think that silver colored zinc of the new bolts just reminds me of a lot of cheap junk like the "some ***embly required" junk from the far east. You know, the ones that have badly translated instructions that say something like, "Please to ***emble wing nut thank you". They come with the ****piest quality bolts. The grade 8 bolts with the gold cadmium plating do look a little nicer than the zinc plated grade 5 bolts though. I guess I am getting a little carried away though worrying about what the bolts look like.
I have spayed them lightly with black rattle and rubbed them in bondo dust and dirt and the really look like ****.
Why not just buy "black" bolts and nuts in the first place? OR You could try a parkerising compound , that is probably the dull blackoxide finish you were talking about on the old bolts. There is a cold one dip finish you could use called Presto Black. OR you could put them in a wire basket and boil them in a pot of caustic soda and water with a block of zinc in the bottom.( outside on the barbeque or gas ring and don't breath in the fumes) You will need some rusty steel in there too. This will remove the rust and cover all of the bolts in protective ferric oxide..black . Take them out , and air dry them on a clean surface , spray oil them with WD40 or Marvel Mystery Oil etc or they will start to rust. Once dry they will be just like the old parkerised bolts you found on the old parts . This works for getting rid of rust on old parts too....leaves them with that black oxide finish. I learned it here http://www.btc-bci.com/~billben/rust.htm
Totally Stainless sells black oxide stainless bolts. Parkerizing is the finish your probably looking for though. I've restored a couple of 1940's Harleys and just beltsanded the markings off of a grade 8 bolt and "parkereized" them, not perfect but OK. There's kits out there you can get, just google it.
I fall into the same pitfalls at times. I need guys to come around and chew my *** for awhile to keep me in line. We get too indulgent in trying to achieve the look. We are building history here on the Hamb. Like it's been said...Let time do it's job.
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