Hey guys this is Rob with Gold Plating Services.
Today I just wanted to talk about some of the finer points of plating onto chrome items.
I would say one of our number one tech support calls is people wondering some of the nuances
of it, so I just wanted to cover it.
A lot of these are subjects that have been in other videos, but I wanted to elaborate
on them a little bit more.
I have this emblem here and I'm using the Universal Plater Chrome Edition.
I've got it all set up and ready to go with chrome stripper, surface activator and our
24k bush gold gel.
I prefer the gel for this type of work because it doesn't drip all over the place.
Alright so I preset it to eight volts just because we're going to want it for the activator.
This first port is at a solid twelve volts and it doesn't even run through the controller
in that, so don't worry about it for this step.
I'm going to just start with a little area right here and I'm going to strip the chrome.
As it's stripping you see it changed to a different color.
That's fine, but that does not mean that all the chrome is off.
This chrome was particularly thin and came off really quickly.
I can tell just by looking, but some emblems have really thick chrome and you're not going
to hurt it by doing this too much.
That's my point number one.
You cannot over chrome strip but believe me you can undergo strip and if under chrome
strip you'll have a lot of issues and we'll show that here in a minute.
That's probably good, now we're going to move on to the next tip.
As you rinse look for anywhere the water beads up, notice over here the beading that's because
of the chrome.
Over here where it stays wet that's fresh nickel stripped well.
Now we are going to flip it back to normal plating mode.
If you don't flip, it back to normal plating mode neither of these two ports will work.
You have to flip it back to normal plating mode.
We do that on purpose, so that people don't ruin the nickel.
If it was in chrome stripping mode and you went on to the activator like this, it would
destroy that nickel.
The activator is quick; just go over it long enough just to get some of that activator
everywhere.
That was at seven volts.
While plating that is what you want to have, so that means put it to eight before.
Now you've got to remember to turn down your voltage for the gold or it will burn.
Everybody has made that mistake before.
I'm going to set it to five and a quarter.
We'll just start plating and the gold should go on very quickly.
If you continue to move in these small circles it shouldn't burn.
If you just sit here and hold still; let's see if we get a burn.
At the volts I'm at it didn't even burn, but if I had it a little higher you can get it
to burn instantly actually.
Alright so notice I chrome stripped to here.
I don't know if you can see the color difference, but there is you can see it to the naked eye.
I left about a half of an inch.
Usually you should probably leave a little more, I call that a buffer zone.
If you don't leave a buffer zone and you try and gold plate directly up to that edge or
even close to it when you add on, I guess we did get a bit of a burn here.
Anyway, if I were to have plated it right up to that line, there’s that line you can
see it, then when I go to add onto do more it would leave a black line.
The other important point I want to make about that is that there is a gradient.
It’s not like here is chrome and there is nickel, there a gradient there, that’s why
you need a big buffer zone.
That’s the number one mistake that I get when I’m taking tech calls.
People try and plate too much, other point is people may say why didn’t you just plate
the whole piece at once.
Well a good plater probably could.
You know someone who’s done this a lot could probably plate this whole thing in one go,
but it’s risky.
If you try and plate the whole thing you may miss an area, you may not get all the chrome
off, you may get a spot in your gold.
Then you’ve got to polish it all off and start over.
You’re better off doing small sections, just take my word for it.
Here I went a little shorter on the chrome stripping, also a little risky, but if it
makes a problem it’s a learning point, so I’m not too worried about it for this video.
We’re activating again and this is where I chrome stripped over into the gold on purpose.
That’s another tip I want to give you.
You always want to strip into the gold, activate into the gold.
Then gold plate into the gold.
If you do that, you’ll have the least chance of having a line.
So now let’s see how we did with the blend of these two areas together.
See if I had liquid gold it would just be dripping all over the place.
The gel is really nice especially if you’re plating an emblem that’s on
the car.
Looking good, alright we’re going to do this front here.
What I want to do is I’m going to purposely; this chrome is so thin I don’t know if I’ll
be able to do it.
Let’s see what happens on a section if I don’t strip enough.
I’ll just hit it, alright it looks good.
Our chrome striper is so hot and it’s at twelve volts with this particular kit, so
that it really rips the chrome off fast.
It isn’t a bad thing because chrome stripping is one of the things that a lot of people
complain takes too much time if they don’t have a good kit.
Then we activate, but if you do regardless of what happens with this experiment, if you
do have an area that looks cloudy or the gold is taking forever to go on 99% of the time
it is because you did not get all the chrome off.
The only way to fix it is to polish it off and start over, granted you only have to polish
that area again.
What I’m going to do here is because it doesn’t look like, even though I tried stripping
too quick, it worked.
What I’m going to do is kind of gold plate too far and let’s see if we can get a line.
See if you notice where I stripped it’s gold plating, but if I try and plate beyond
that it see how it doesn’t take.
If you’re witnessing that that’s chrome every single time.
It will look weird; it’ll look splotchy and like torn.
See how there’s these streaky marks, that’s because it was trying to plate into the chrome.
Now let’s add onto that and see what happens.
Okay back to normal plating mode and activates really quick.
If you guys thing of any questions that you have just put them down in the comments and
we’ll be happy to answer them for you.
I’m trying to save you guys trouble when you’re trying to do these chrome items.
99% of people get the kit and have no issues.
If you do have issues, it’s not the end of the world and we’ll help you fix it.
We would like to save you trouble and make sure you’re successful.
Let’s see if I can show you, so in here you if you get the angle just right, you can
see this hazy, foggy, cloudy, ugly looking deposit that’s where I plated right up to.
That’s what some people say there’s a line or a mark or some foggy areas, that’s
a classic mark right there.
The only way to fix that would be to polish it with Mother’s, Mag and Aluminum Polish,
then rinse if off with soap and water well.
Then strip, activate and plate it again.
You will have little scratches in it after you do that, but I mean it looks better than
that blemish does.
I’m trying to think of what else I want to cover to help you guys out.
It’s actually really easy to use this kit.
I was trying to make some mistakes, but it wasn’t as easy to make mistakes as I had
hoped.
I guess that’s a testament to our product.
I’ll just go ahead and finish this up just to reiterate again and if anyone has any questions
please do feel free to ask.
Put it in chrome stripping mode, and I’m just going to try and finish all of it in
one swoop.
If you’re doing a wheel let’s say that’s where these concepts, I’m talking about
become important.
There’s no way, you cannot strip the whole wheel.
There’s another question people ask why can’t I just strip the whole item?
Just go ahead and strip it all and then come back and activate it all and then go ahead
and gold plate it all.
Or why can’t I just strip the whole wheel and then activate little sections and gold
plate little sections?
They are valid points and I have a lot of people who say they’ve been told to do that
by other platers, don’t do it.
The reason is if you strip the entire wheel and then you start activating, I’m going
to show you in a sec let me rinse this off.
If you, let’s say this is a giant wheel.
Alright we had a little bit of a technical difficulty with the camera, it stopped recording
and we didn’t realize it.
Now I plated the whole thing, but I wanted to finish my point about the wheel sections.
Like I said you do not want to strip the entire wheel because what will happen is when you’re
activating right here, when you take your spray bottle and spray it or rinse it and
activator that gets onto exposed nickel will create dark spots.
It corrodes the nickel, and when you plate it, it won’t cover up.
The chrome in the areas you are not currently plating actually protects that area until
you get to it.
Since you can’t do the whole thing in one go, so my recommendation if this was a wheel,
break it up into sections about this big.
Do a five inch by five-inch area, probably about the size of your hand.
Strip the whole thing and then activate the whole thing, but then only gold plate right
up to the rim of it that’s the way to do wheels.
Anyway, guys I’m going to wrap this video up.
The emblem definitely has some mistakes not as many as I expected, but I hope you guys
learned something from this video.
Thanks for watching and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below and
have a nice day.