I recently started zinc plating my own parts again, since there are no local platers near to me, who will do small batches (nearest is 60 miles away). I have been obtaining pretty good results .. probably on par with what Allenchrome did for me in the past professionally. A real PITA in terms of the prep. required to get good results though, particularly if you have loads to do and the items are large. My advice if you are going to try it yourself is go to Gateros and not the other outfit who sell home plating stuff called Youplate. I got crap results with the latter despite loads of emails to the owner. In the end I just voted with my feet, cut my losses and went back to Gateros zinc chemicals, which give great results with little hassle, in terms of the finish achieved. I thhink the key is that Gateros buy in relatively expensive brighteners, which work really well.
Recently I have been putting together the TLS brake linkages for my CB72 and CB450K0. Some people don't de-rivet these before re-chroming but that seems really bodgy to me and the chromers don't like it either. I was therefore faced with drilling out the old rivets and making new ones on my little lathe/milling machine and my mate Graham suggested I make two part replacements, that are bonded with Loctite in stainless steel, which don't require any riveting. I made the nine sets I needed (took a long time as I am not proficient at turning
). Then I pondered and procrastinated and worried that the b*ggers may come apart some time in the future ... not good on brake parts, so I decided to scrap them and make some the same as the originals out of high tensile steel. Graham said he didn't use stainless steel to make conventional rivets because it doesn't peen over very well and has a tendency to split.
I made the 9 steel rivets in carbon steel (EN8) but obliviously, with the stainless ones, you can polish to a high shine to look like chrome. I have always wondered about plating things like the peened over fitting in alloy brake plates (CB750, 500 etc) and decided I would get some brush/wand plating chemicals, make some 'wands' and have a go at zinc plating the steel fitting in the alloy brake plates and also copy chrome for the little TLS rivets.
I have not tried the zinc yet but the copy chrome on the rivet heads has turned out pretty nice. I did have a go with copy chrome back in 2013 and didn't get decent results ...plus before I had chance to experiment further we were flooded, where I was working, and all of my plating chemicals were trashed.
Just wondering if anyone else on here has had a go at brush plating ... It could be useful for the parts mentioned above and also parts like Honda 400 horns, where everything is crimped/riveted together.
This PHd. guy is a bit of a guru on it and I bought his zinc brush plating solution but, as I say I haven't tried it out yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukDXyqnpRsThe bright nickel and copy chrome (actually bright cobalt/nickel) I bought from Gateros.... The guy at Gateros told me not to use stainless steel anodes but to use pure nickel as when uses SS then iron and chromium get deposited into the electrolyte and the electrolyte degrades rapidly)
I don't think large items in copy chrome will look too good .. you can tell it's not 'proper' chrome but on very small parts it's worked out OK for me.
The chaps at Motoclassics (who up until recently owned Caswell Europe) ... gave me this excellent plating manual ... well worth a read!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgwx5sfjni2fwkx/Caswell%20Plating%20Manual.pdf?dl=0
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