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Joined:
June 2002
Posts: 6202
Location: Phoenix AZ | Has anyone here had any experience getting gold hardware replated? I'm talking about electric storm pieces like vibrato arms, bridges, etc. Any recommendation on where to get this done? Dave |
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Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 10583
Location: NJ | it is expensive and it usually does not hold up well contact a place that does chrome plating and they may be able to do it or send you to a place that can. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 1380
Location: Central Oregon | I have quite a few gold plated parts on my bikes. It isn't as durable as chrome, probably because gold is much softer metal. Quality gold plating should hold up at least as well as the original gold plating if not better. A custom plating outfit should do nicer work than a place that does assembly line type work. (Like large commercial outfits doing things like stove legs & doors & that sort of thing. A guy polishing a thousand stove handles probably isn't going to do as nice a job on all of them as a guy polishing six tuning machines, a set of bridges & a whammy bar.) The longer the part is left in the gold bath the thicker the plating & the longer it will last before wearing thin, within reason. It really isn't all that expensive either, more than chrome, but not a lot. The hand work involved in polishing is the expensive part. I'd look in the yellow pages under chrome shops to find a local outfit if possible. Be sure to tape all threads before you send them (or better yet, take them in) & it's a good idea to explain where there are surfaces that can't have a build up of plating & the edges & areas that you don't want polished until they're rounded off. I've had to peel chrome out if the inside of a Harley oil pump & the mating surfaces re-machined because the platers didn't know which part went inside & which part showed. I've also had the threads plated on head bolts & special Harley bolt heads polished until they would no longer take a wrench. One other piece of advice- don't go to the cheapest plater. The high dollar outfit won't cost that much more, but the parts are much more likely to still fit together when you get them back.
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Joined:
January 2003
Posts: 1498
Location: San Bernardino, California | For some reason our phonebook lists plating services under "metal polishing". Go figure. |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | I had my favourite brass slide nickle-plated about 15 years ago because my rancid sweat made it turn my finger green. I've hunted around for companies who can do gold-plating, but the ones I found wouldn't handle small jobs. Someone will if you look hard enough. Al's right though, the plating won't last 5 minutes, and it is expensive, mostly because they have to get rid of all the original plating and any corrosion before they can re-plate. I put a new Gold-plated Bigsby on my Thunderhead a few months ago and it's already showing serious tarnish on the arm. Unsurprising really, my body chemistry can kill a set of strings in 20 minutes flat. |
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Replating Gold Hardware