In a message dated 1/6/2004 10:06:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, sachs@erols.com writes: response to Jose Fonseca's question, Steve Maas wrote:
There are lots of shops that do chrome plating of car and motorcycle parts; check the yellow pages of your phone book. The one time I had a fork replated locally it cost $45. You can also go to places like Cyclart, but they are more expensive. Chrome plating isn't cheap, unfortunately. ---------------------- In my opinion, the reasons chroming isn't cheap are important, and I've been reluctant to again ask for it to be done.
First, you must have someone experienced. Decades ago, we got the "best" custom motorcycle shop in the area to re-do Beloved Spouse's 61 Atala. Despite his drilling oversized holes for draining and flushing the nasties, one seat stay still rusted out later. They MUST be religious about cleaning. In addition, the surfaces were not particularly well polished.
And that is the second point: Polishing is one key to good appearance. However, too much and you get serious dimensional change (yeah, they got the burrs off that bolt head, but the hex faces are not the same length -- or angles! -- any more, and it only takes a crescent wrench now.) Too little, and you will "fossilize" and preserve some rust pits, scars, etc. In the "old days," people valued full chrome Paramounts so highly that some were done after-market. These always had rough bottom brackets, since that area had so many places that were essentially impossible to reach. At least that was the Urban Legend back then...
Next, I'd at least want to raise a couple of points that are more-or-less ethical. Polishing is dangerous work, since the belts and wheels work by grinding, and like to grab and hurl stuff. Chroming involves lots of pretty toxic stuff, which requires fairly expensive reclamation and/or disposal to protect the environment.
So, I suspect that the next time I have some done, it will be for a real wall queen that is ready to be looked at but not ridden any more.
I guess I'm being a bit contrarian, maybe to rationalize my unwillingness to retire the olde (38) paramount, whose headset needs a visit to the dentist or chrome shop or both...
harvey sachs McLean VA I'll take a short chime here. We were commissioned to have a cinelli SuperCorsa chromed at a former shop with which i was involved in 1978. Alexandria Metal Finishers was chosen but with the fine lugs they wanted me to be the responsible one and remove the old chrome- with abrasive paper and cloth. We were only doing lugs (and the necessary tubing in proximity that's required.)
I first went to United bumper platers because they did a super job welding cracks, restoring, and plating the two bumbers on my '46 chevy panel for $35 each about 8 years earlier, but their work was more industrial.
Long story short, I dynafiles and emery-clothed those lugs to the point that therre was not much left. I never heard back from the customer but it seemed that with any stress the lug would have yielded. Chrome, the platers bark, simply mirrors the finish it plates. It must look like chrome before it's plated with chrome.
In my motorhead and scooter days, there was the belief that West coast chrome was different from East coast. One was warmer, the other bluer.
Larry Black
Mt airy, Md