That's an ole' biker saying that implies if your ride looks sweet, well you get the rest. I just rolled in from work and found a big box of boat jewelry from the chromer waiting on my door step. Gotta go now, I'm heading to the lake to varnish!!!!!!!!! More stories and pics next week. The count down begins today.


8 DAYS TO LAUNCH


Yours Truly inhawkuptomyeyeballsandindutchwiththeolelady, Chris

I love getting chrome back, but I don't like paying for it. As a matter of fact, I have all the windshield hold-open stanchions etc., to rechrome as the season comes to a close.

Hope the project is going well.

Regards,

Paul

Chris,

Do you send them to Canada or is there someplace in the Rust Belt?

Terry

OK, here's my dumb question. If it cost so much why can't we chrome our own parts? Where do I find the contents of the solution and how much power do I need? What I saw on TV was no big deal, maybe getting the raw stock is but the rest was easy. Someone describe the process to me and maybe I can start choroming for all of us. EVERYTHING on my boat needs chroming and my wife is already complaining that it cost too much to feed me.
Jerry

Jerry,
I've had a LOT of new chrome work done over the past few years and the biggest problem you will encounter is the EPA. They are militant about the chroming/plating process. Talking to the chroming shops and they tell me the biggest expense is permitting and hazardous waste disposal. A lot of plating companies have gone belly up around here because of this.
Just my two cents.
spentalotofchromecashola Steve

Steve:
Then it seems like I will have to set up shop in West Virginia some where! Those ole boys know how to deal with the Revenuers!
Jerry

You may find one them good ole boys can brew up some sort of elixir that may be better than chrome AND you can drink it.............
Steve

Steve:
You are right! We may be on to something here and it sounds like a win - win solution. What we can't drink we can always run through the engines! Super octane like that could make the boat run fast enough to peel the chrome right off the cleats!
Jerry

Before





AFTER!!!!!!!!





Here is the first batch. It cost me 1.065 Boat units. That would be $1065.00 on land, or a mere 266.25 gallons of gasoline in central Ohio!




A couple of my favorite pieces of metal sculpture.




This my fellow Commandsters is called a "hawse pipe or hawse hole plate". It is a through deck fitting that the line chases through to a cleat mounted below deck. I never knew it had a name until I tried to compare the price of re plating to purchasing new.




This is inside the shop I took the parts to. They specialize in custom work on cars, boats and motorcycles. They have three grades of work.
1) Standard for not so important pieces of steel.
2) High Quality which is triple plated Copper, Nickle, then Chrome
3) Show This wood be for the "Concourse" Baby Gar going to Tahoe this august. The polishing and copper fill would probably be repeated until there were absolutely no pits or defects at all.

The 2 major factors for re plating to cost so damn much are; 1)the EPA, the costs to properly dispose of the toxic waste are enormous. And of course labor. It is much more that a quick dip here and there. Back in the days of chrome bumpers, a good friend of mine had a bumper chroming business in down town Columbus, Ohio. The toilet bowl was a strange color of green due to something the old timers dumped in there way back when. On weekends used to get a couple beers and take our motorcycle parts down and polish and plate them ourselves. Trust me polishing metal is a dirty, hard and dangerous job. The polishing wheels can catch an edge and fling a 5lb. piece of steel across the room at 100mph!

We could only do steel parts because they didn't have the permits necessary to have copper tanks.(something to due with there old way of disposal, the toilet maybe?) Anyway soft metals like aluminum, brass and bronze require the copper plate to fill pits and so forth. First you have to strip and polish the piece to a mirror finish. Plating is like clear coating a paint job, the plating just makes it shinny pits and all. After polishing comes the copper and then more polishing. You get the idea, it is just like anything else on our boats. It is the unseen prep work that takes all the time but, also achieves the quality of finished product we expect or at least hope for.

To reiterate Chrome cost = Chemicals, Disposal, and Polishing Labor. Oh yea, they gotta keep the lights on, too!
Do I sound like a Chrome salesman, I do gotta' clear the next batch through the boss. I am just practicing!


Yours Truly, Chris

WOW Chris: What a difference a measly 1.65 boat units make! I guess I am going to have to go after the "Well Used" look for my Commander. Whew. Good job describing the process. Now I have to get rid of that 55 gallon barrel of salt water I was going to use.
Jerry

Chris,

You are so right about the dangers of polishing. There have been two occasions with my large drill press, one using a polishing wheel and the other using a rigged sanding rod I devised, where the work was caught and flung so hard it could have killed someone. On one of the occasions, the piece that was flung real hard was a cast iron inboard boat propeller hub. Had that hit me I might not be here today. I couldn't even find the darn thing in the shop. Finally, there it was way over on the other side under a car, and thankfully it didn't take out the windshield of that 1974 TVR sitting there or hit anything important.

If you don't hold the work to the polishing wheel properly, it can be pulled out of your hands and flung around too, as you described. Very dangerous. Having learned without having to give blood, I can tell you there is only one safe way to hold work against a polishing wheel, and any short cuts are just downright dangerous.

These photos give me some motivation to do more chrome work on TRADITION. Hey, question for you: If you have a piece of chrome (like you very large air intake) and it is not pitted, but has some surface corrosion starting to set in (very very small microscopic looking small pits I guess), can they polish that and just add a layer of chrome, or do they have to take it all the way down?

Regards,

Paul

Thats some pertty chrome alright and from personal experience that cost doesn't surprise me..I wonder if the wife would consider this jewelry, maybe an anniversary gift?hmmmm

Paul, when I had a bunch of items chromed they filled the pits with nickel, I think, and then polish it out. Any surface imperfections will be amplified if their not highly polished prior to chroming so the good shops will take the effort AND your money and give you a quality finish. The guys told me that most of the labor is exhausted in the prep work, much like painting.
Steve

I hear you loud and clear about the amplification issue. My chrome looks very good from a few feet away, but upon close examination you can tell it is starting to deteriorate a bit. That's why I was wondering if they could polish out and just give me a top coat, or whether or not I'd have to go all the way.

I suppose I could visit my friendly chrome shop and ask them to look at one of the pieces.

Regards,

Paul

I pretty much gave up what I know for sure about the chrome process all ready. I don't think the re coating idea would work maybe because of the variation in thickness and the electrical conductivity???? It usually takes copious amounts of copper to fill pits also.



Not Sure, Chris

Chris:
Your pictoral essay on chroming methodology was stunning. I re-evaluated Summer Palace based on it. Clearly, to do it right, I have to go this route.

Now, until then, what is your, and maybe Cha Cha's and Steve's, opinion regarding this product? In the hot rod magazines I saw some advertizements on home electroplating and looked up the site:

http://www.eastwoodco.com

Then searched within and found:

http://eastwood.resultspage.com/search?p=Q&ts=custom&w=Chroming&submit.x=29&submit.y=12
Description:
Electroplating System Tin Zinc
Restores natural shine for any brass, copper, and steel parts Preps parts with anti-corrosive protective plating Inexpensively adds luster with chrome like finish Just polish after simple plating process- for a beautiful shine.

This system looks, like you said earlier, "it looks too easy". Could this be thowing good money after bad? Doing all the parts needed on the Summer Palace is too expensive for me to do at once right now and I don't have all the air intakes, stantion caps, etc. I am thinking about doing it right in sets or in priorities and doing some of the less important others using this "cheaper" process untill their turn comes. Comments?
Jerry

Seems to me that everything they show on the infomercial is in a raw state and has to be buffed before plating. Might be great on that old Ford truck, but I am sceptical abuot a Salt Water Commander. I didn't bother to look at the price, if it is cheap, give it a try on something less important than the boat.

My .00002 boat units, CW