Someone ever did their own plating on bolts and such

Belgian1979vette

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I'm contemplating on doing this and have found some good info. The difficult part is the yellow coloured plating you sometimes find on items. This is done with a sodium dichromate solution which is rather nasty as I read.

Anyone have any experience and if so how do you do it ?
 
No personal experience with it, but I did read and article several years ago in Mustang Monthly and they were electroplating bolts on a restoration job. I seem to recall that most of the items to perform the task were available through Eastwood. Who knows if any of that is still available due to EPA regs these days, but I remember seeing black oxide and zinc chromate finishes in the article. Let us know if you find anything.
 
I bought an Eastwood kit to do plating but have never tried it. I think it is good for small parts. To do bigger things, you need more power than the kit provides.

I think they sell the DIY plating manual explaining how to do it. You don't really need the kit.
 
I would imagine the chromium is the hard part of that due to disposal issues. You would probably need a license for that.
 
One corvette shop I dealt with would save all his old hardware and once he had a basket full, he'd send it out for plating. He said they solvent washed and plated, and the old bolts looked like new when they came back.

My guess is that sending it out is the way to go.
 
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