Shinier and chrome-ier

"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile) 07/15/2019 at 22:13 • Filed to: Uncle Ramblinrover

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Went back and polished out all the plating from Saturday with steel wool and polishing compounds, then clear coated. Had to replate sections of the sides to remove blemishes, but that wasn’t too hard.

Il mask this off, sand the edge to remove clear, and self-etching primer up to the edge of chrome in the morning. May try to finish priming and Bondo the mold creases tomorrow evening, or even get the metalcast base layer on.

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/15/2019 at 22:24

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So when are we going to raid digger land together and make off with tiny Series Land Rovers like crazed Oceans 11 shriners?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/15/2019 at 22:25

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I should note that since the layer is thin and the finish was not sealed, it did some browning over the weekend. Controlled, but a major reason I wanted to polish it up and clear. It’s not as thick as a zinc plating on a bolt, not really, and to get there would require more time and plating solution than I feel comfortable spending.

Also, because I didn’t polish the steel to an absolute mirror finish, the end finish is slightly coarse and like old chrome or slightly weathered aluminum instead of brand sparkling new mirror chrome. Meh.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. 07/15/2019 at 22:27

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Ixnay on the elling-everybody-tay.

NKato > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/15/2019 at 23:06

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I gotta ask, how hard is it to plate aluminum and steel in chrome?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > NKato 07/15/2019 at 23:25

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Actual genuine chrome, harder than what I’m doing, which is nickel alloy called CopyChrome. It is possible to get chrome to stick directly to steel but comparatively stupidly difficult. This stuff is a little fiddly and goes on sloooooowly, but can tolerate tiny amounts of spotting on the steel. Chrome is so hard to get to stick well that it’s usually done with something called triple plating, iirc carbon- treating the steel, plating with copper , then pure nickel , then chrome.

That’s for steel. One doesn’t normally plate aluminum, and if one did one would most likely treat it with conductive coating much like plastic... or coat with one of the several metals that doesn’t mix weirdly, like copper, first.

Much more common to anodize aluminum, since that forces a corrosion resistant coating (sometimes with additives) of the aluminum’s own oxide.

As to the difficulty of the process like with what I’m doing: after some difficult surface prep, a lot of swabbing a little wand back and forth like painting some kind of special effect on a really finicky model.

NKato > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/15/2019 at 23:34

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I asked because I’m looking at options for chroming my pushbars and fender wraps. The pushbars are aluminum while the wraps are steel.

Also looking at like-chrome powder coating options. A duller finish, and not as mirror- like.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > NKato 07/16/2019 at 00:08

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What I was doing here is best for this application, selective plating of smaller areas. Your things might need to be tank dipped. Unfortunately, tank dipping is real money.

I think Caswell has some bucket scale CopyChrome/etc. dip plating setups to buy for “only” hundreds of dollars - aka about what a shop might charge. Eastwood has an intermediate tin plating kit, depending on just how big the pieces are - but that’s kind of a bright white metallic. Not really chrome, a little funky.

Anodizing is probably doable at home with the right kind or adjustable voltage power source. Haven't looked into whether a plating power source would be suitable.

You might see if a local shop does anodizing and plating. If not chrome, at least zinc.

NKato > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/16/2019 at 00:13

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I was told of a couple by the powdercoat shop. I'll be getting estimates from them by the weekend, probably. 

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > NKato 07/16/2019 at 00:28

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You could absolutely use what i was using to do larger pieces, but it’s a thin plate and very tedious. This is about one square foot total, and took hours, just for the plating step.

I considered doing a "chrome" powder coat, as it'd be better then chrome paint, but getting good heat coverage on something this big didn't seem like it would be easy for diy.