Customs ** Advice needed from CHROME PLATERS **

I wonder if the shop would let you see the bumper in copper plate, and allow you to accept the finish before it gets chromed?

 

Looks great!!!

No sand blaster, but i do use a wire wire wheel on a drill to clean everything up before i grind down, not the ultimate, but it helps!! thanx matt!

I sure hope so, still got some filling to do and some minor fine tuning though!

They should, if they won't let you , then i wouldnt do business with them!!! you should be able to pick up your bumper in copper, take it with you, block it or whatever you need to do, then take it back for more copper and so forth!! if they make money every copper baths, i dont see how they would say no way!?!?!?

 

..i have been told by some chrome platers not to mig on stuff to be rechromed.. i am not sure why..but i asume it has something to do with contamination??? however. i have mig'd up stuf and it still looks good to this day many years later...

 

I recall when we actually repaired damaged bars during my body shop days when they were made from real steel and not plastic. No R&R, we had to repair and file them up when another bar wasn't available. Where they were torn or cracked we would weld them up and sand them down. Lots of banging and clanging with a BFH. On occasions we would use br*** filler that was sanded down before the bar was linished for re-chroming.
I had lot of pot metal repaired where it was built up, coppered and then blocked down, recoppered again until ready to chrome. Very time consuming and tedious process, time is money. Don't be overly aggressive with the disc sander just because the bar is thick.

 

i have always used brazing to fill in small areas and blocked file and blocked sanded.

 

I always get a chuckle when I hear a bloke from across the Great Pond call a bumper a bar.

 

It's very similar to the controversy concerning bondo for budywork. Of course, it is MUCH better to TIG, and metal finish your parts to perfection, copper it, and then block and recopper/plate. But at times, it is not always possible to do this.
The next best step is to do the silver solder, or lead free solder fill on the coppered parts. Regular body lead is also OK, but the other ones are stronger.
I've repaired many parts with solder on copper, pot metal parts especially. But also welded bumpers that mysteriously got pitted after a trip to the platers. These are usually platers who are cheaper priced, and do not do topnotch work. But they are good enough for most parts. They just need help with "tricky" parts being plated. I've even gotten TIGed parts back with pits...I really don't know how they do it, when I've given them a perfectly ground and sanded (almost polished) part!

I believe the only tricky part about using solder, is that if the plater's polishers use too much force, and build up a lot of heat when polishing the copper, after heavy solder work, is that it can remelt the solder, and cause waves in the part. If you restrict your soldering to a minimum, this shouldn't be a problem.

 

THANK YOU!!

This is exactly what I've been told!!!! It's all in the hands of the polisher i guess?!?!?!?!

 

Ian,

Your metal finishing on the bumper looks really good. Hit it with gloss black spray bomb now and see how it looks as far as waves, scratches, swirls to see if it needs additional blocking.

Choose a plater and then bring the part by or send pics for an estimate. A top notch shop will want to do the final touch up to perfection before the plating process, however, like body work, the closer you get the part with your labor means less labor prep by them which equals less prep costs.

 

Thank you!

Been using this layout spray, works great!

 

Thank you James, My father in law is in reno and he makes the drive there for his chrome. He also to me " NOT CHEAP " , but one of the best platers.

 

I have seen platers use br*** to fill and knock down and after that they polish it to see waviness. Once its good they do a copper plating which is just like a primer and is usually polished before going into the nickel plating and chrome plating processes which still see lots of polishing time in between dips.

 

****m works great.. has it made you light headed yet Ian???

 

Does this mean we are coming close to an update on the caddy?

 

I have also had parts that i have MIG welded and then ground/ polished to perfection (or darn near,haha) be returned to me with pits showing after being plated.The chrome shop told me that they use an acid to clean the parts which must dissolve very small amounts of contamination left by the Mig welding.As i said,i polished the parts myself and they looked great,no pits, period.When i asked him how to repair the pits he said they were going to use silver solder from now on.But they didn't use it on my parts? Oh well,live and learn.Good luck Ian,i'm sure you will get it figured out,you do very nice work!

 

Hell yeah! I LOVE IT!

 

Too bad man! That blows!
Thank you very much Jim!

 

Ian -

I'm no expert, but I have a bit of personal experience.

On my Hudson, I had a 3 piece bumper that needed to be seamed, and then each of the end pieces sectioned a bit. I also welded the holes up too before plating.

The first thing I did was to take the bumper to the plater and have the old chrome stripped.
Then I had the back side of the bumper blasted.
On each area I had that needed to be welded, I ground off the old copper/nickel plating before welding.
I used a MIG to weld it all up, making sure to watch my seams very closely.

I finished and dressed the bumper as best I could with a grinder and a file. I'll point out that when dressing the weld seams, you want to try not to take any material off from the bumper itself on either side of the weld, or use only the edge of the griding wheel. Why? It created a low spot (even though you can't really see it) and when the plater straightens the bumper, they had to take off a lot of material to get out the low areas.

When I took the bumper in to have it plated, the plater did some final straightening. He used a HUGE grinder with a giant (10 inch maybe) wheel and ran it over the whole bumper. This smooths out any minor ups and downs / highs and low spots.

I had the bumper copper / nickel / chrome plated, and it turned out beautifully.

Total cost was around $850.00 or so.

Here's a pic (the seam was directly under the tail-light, and then each wrap around end on the bumper was sectioned about a 1/4 inch):


After looking through your pics, I think you'll be just fine, as long as you let the plater do the final smoothing / filing. It is worth the extra 3-4 hours labor for a perfect finish.
Thanks,
Keith

 

Looks soooooo good!!!!

Thanx for the tips!!

 

thanks for the thread Ian, I was wondering the same thing for my pieced together bumpers!
I dont think you have a thing to worry about with the quality metal finishing you are doing. If you sum up everything that everyone has posted, it all boils down to getting it as close as you can and choosing a plater that knows what he is doing. Yours will look perfect!

 

First of all, every plater is different. Some won't continue work that is already started, especially if there is lead or silver solder, or even br***.


I'm not one of those. I will gurantee work even with another platers plating on it already, but only because I will remove it all before adding any of my own.

There is a really good reason not to use lead or silver-bearing lead free solder on your bumper before going to the plater. The pretreatment before plating on bumpers is acidic, and will eat out silver solder and even brazed silver. Even a sandblasted bumper needs to be chemically stripped/cleaned because of flash rust, and hidden impurities. That is why it is best to use soldering after the bumper has already been sealed in copper.

Lead will typically survive the acid treatment, but is fickel to plate and has a very low melting point when it comes to polishing later on. I personally don't use lead in our shop because I don't want the lead dust in the air; we have enough dangerous things here without inviting an unnesesary one. Many years ago we used lead for a long time; never again.

Lead free silver bearing solder is best for soldering parts to be plated, and it sticks to copper really well; easy to work with.

Br*** brazing is great for modified bumpers. I encourage its use to fill in porosity in steel welds, but check with other platers first. Even so, the bumpers will still need multiple copper platings. Each acid copper bath is typiclaly at least 2 hours, plus racking time and copper strike time.

To the semiconductor guy, I think you are referring to Hydrogen embrittelment, which isn't an issue with bumpers at all. The copper has an elecrochemical bond with the steel substrate. As long as the plating is done correctly, only mechanical removal or melting will separate the two. The copper/steel bond is extremely strong.

Someone mentioned the issue of overgrinding the weld and they are right on about it. It is a very common issue I get with modified bumpers, and time consuming $$$ to repair correctly.

The best steel welds for plating prep is TIG hands down. Even TIG gets porosity pitting, but its less than MIG, and much less than arc.

To those complaing about the pits that appeared out of nowhere on your perfectly welded seams, welcome to the world of custom plating. That is the normal. The plater did not make it worse, it just looked worse after being cleaned of contaminants and polish to a mirror. It's up to proper communication between plater and customer to ensure final results match expectations. The filling of those pits can easily double the cost of the plating job bacause of extra filling, copper plating, and polishing.

Failure to communicate is one of the biggest issues to deal with as a plater. The customer usually doesn't understand how the process works, but it gets worse when the customer tells the plater how it works and won't believe the plater when they tell differently. It really doesn't help when so many platers will take advantage of the average customer and make up lies about how plating works, further convoluting the whole mess. As in every business transaction, knowledge is power. I've had other platers lie to my face about some of the simplest things about custom electroplating; and they knew I was a fellow plater!

If you have a plater telling you something that sounds fishy, I'll be happy to give my opinion on it with enough info.

I'm sure I missed something...

 

It really doesn't help when so many platers will take advantage of the average customer and make up lies about how plating works, further convoluting the whole mess. As in every business transaction, knowledge is power. I've had other platers lie to my face about some of the simplest things about custom electroplating; and they knew I was a fellow plater!

If you have a plater telling you something that sounds fishy, I'll be happy to give my opinion on it with enough info.

I'm sure I missed something...[/QUOTE]

Thanx Josh for taking the time to write this!!! Much appreciated!!!!

^^^^^^^ THIS UP THERE HAPPENS TOO OFTEN I THINK, and that's why most people hate dealing with platers. Too bad!!
I'm gonna keep working on my bumpers as best i can, since i can't drop 5000$ on a single modified bumper, and hopefully someone will be willing to plate them when I'm done.... If not, my bumpers will be painted and I'll just bring back the 80's!!!! LOL!!! Just kidding!!

I know it'll all work out!!!

Thanx Josh and everyone for pitching in!!!

 

Thanks for the thread and thank you Josh for all your wisdom of expirence, this excellent information indeed.

 

Wow! GREAT thread, Ian!!! Been wondering about this stuff as well.

I had a Triumph motorcycle frame that had a REAL old chrome job done on it, but had been modified by various tweakers over the years and thus was flaking and looking bad. I had the chrome plate stripped and took the rest down by hand and noticed a TON of br***/brazing done around various unions of the frame as well as around the neck area. Then copper, then nickel, and the obvious chrome to follow.

I have a '53 Pontiac with an absolute SH!T TON of chrome that needs to be redone on it (THE WHOLE GRILLE!!!!!) and have some pitting to address with just about every piece. These are mostly rust pits. Should this be treated the same as welding voids and pits? Obviously if you try to polish out corrosion pits or welding voids you take the risk of thinning the metal quite a bit. And for that matter, if it's a steel part with pits, I'm guessing welding up pits will be a nightmare for a number of reasons. Is br*** a good solution for heavy pitting that has been neutralized by chemical bath or media blasting?

Also, something else I didn't see mentioned (unless I just missed it) was to what level of finish would a person want to take their metal to before going off to the plater? Smoother the better? 600 grit? 1000 grit??

 

Depending on how nice the part is, the smoother the finish, the better. However, there is no need to take a part down any farhter than a 240ish grit if it is going to need a lot of repairs and copper plating. The whole part will get the thick copper, and the part isn't done until the worst areas are done; meaning the whole part will be sanded down in copper multple times, giving more than enough leveling to even take out 60 grit if needed.

If the part doesn't need any repair work, it can be brought to a 600ish grit or even buffed.

Br*** is great for filling rust pitting, but the heat can cause serious warpage if not used carefully. I use br*** sparingly on sheet metal parts, such as grill stampings.

For instance, I am currently working an a large steel grill bar off of a 56 Pontiac Safari. The lower section was rusted through in multple spots, and it was really thin all over from rusting on both sides of the part. On the top face, I was able to carefully sand out almost all rust pitting, but on the bottom section there just wasn't any good steel left to sand on.

So I brazed up the see-thru areas first, then coppered it. After the copper plating, the part was now more stout and would take solder really well. So I soldered up hundreds of rust pits, sometimes just tinning over the worst sections. Even then after sanding down the solder there were missed pits. So after another 3-4 hours of copper, I touched it up with more soldering. Then after another 3-4 hours of copper, it is finally starting to look pretty good. Now it is in copper plating again, and I may bring it to a buff.

The bottom section doesn't really show much once installed, and the customer stated he doesn't need it to be perfect down there becasue of that fact, so I am letting a few pits slide on the bottom section of the grill. It could be made perfect, but it doesn't need to be, and in order to get rid of the last few pits, it would add a lot of extra cost.

I initially charged $495 for it. After stripping I was able to see that it was farther rusted than was first apparent. After getting customer approval, I added another $400; this covers extra plating and soldering work. If he had wanted the lower area free of all pits, the price would have jumped over a grand.


And $5000 for any single bumper is ridiculous.