Re: [CR]Copper plated bicycles - polishing

(Example: Production Builders:Peugeot)

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 10:30:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Copper plated bicycles - polishing

I recently tried to polish up a washington dollar for my son with a copper polishing compound. This resulted in many, many scratches that were visible to the naked eye. The thing that makes copper shine is the smoothness of the plating, and NO scratches. So try out your polishing technique on a lincoln penny or a copper dollar before trying it on your bicycle. I was NOT using brasso, and I know brasso is available in Boston, at least.

If you happen to polish through the copper, it's conceivable that you could restore a small area with a brush plating set. I've had good luck with the sets from Caswell Plating :

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/plugnplate.htm

Steve Maas also uses these kits with good results on his bikes :

http://www.nonlintec.com/bikepages/

I own a chrome plating set, and also a copper plating set, although I haven't used the latter (yet). And they are on sale today at reduced prices, so please check them out. Once you have bought the initial kit with a power supply, all you need is a plating wand and a bottle of plating solution to plate other types of metal.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA