Re: Deleted email about Caswell
I went way on the cheap side and bought just the solution for the copy chrome plug and plate kit, PNPCC9. I think it was about $20 and is for brush plating, but I used it in a glass with a small power supply I had to do the electro plating. In general, the results were not very satisfactory. The stuff is really a nickel plate with some bluing agent in it to look like chrome. It's not bad if you get all the rust off, a good polish, cleaning and a good plate, but I started messing up with the wrong anode and some of my later stuff is now getting rust spots on it. Since it's a nickel plate the stuff will tarnish. Here's my fork top bolt today before and after I polished it with just some Meguiar's Cleaner Wax on a tissue, so it's easy to polish back. And my spacer and spindle on the rear wheel which is starting to rust, either from left over rust or lack of plating.
I think if I did it again, I'd go with the cobalt electroless plating kit, you can get the small one for $90. Depends on how much stuff you want to do. If you aren't worried about it looking like chrome or polished stainless, one could go with just cad or anodized plating from a local plater There is a recent thread about how to cad plate, but I don't think I want to mess around with cyanide. At least with the Caswell stuff, they have ways to break down the solutions so it's not bad any more.
In any case to get these plating kits to work right, you have to totally follow the instructions and there may still be some playing around with it. Biggest thing is to get all the rust off old parts, polish if you want shiny, and it must be degreased completely. I used carb cleaner instead of the Caswell heated cleaning solution since all of my parts were pretty small. Once you buy one of their kits, you can use their plating forum and the help there may or may not be helpful.
The nice thing about these plating kits is you are only putting on maybe .001" or less, so the build up on threads is not usually an issue. If it were chrome plated, you would be building up a lot more than .001"
Hope this helps, I'll see if I can rename this thread Caswell plating.
Dave
69S