| The springtime
always does it to me - I get a fever to lay some rubber on the asphalt.
I still haven't recovered all my energy, but I have been doing some
little pieces for the Buick, and so has my buddy overseas, Tom
Haltmeyer |
| A word about
Tom
Haltmeyer of Peoria, Arizona. I don't remember how I got into contact with him, but it
was in
the early stages of my appointment with the Buick forums on the web. I
recall Tom offered to act as a middle-man to help get some Buick parts
from the US. And he did - he bid the viper towers at eBay for me that
were "will ship to US only" type of auction. Thanks again! Tom is the kind of a man who does his own cars and his own parts, and earns my full respect by doing so. As a hobby, Tom learned how to perform DIY chrome plating, and tried to get me into it, too. Somehow I lacked the enthusiasm, as most my Buick parts were so long they'd required huge baths. But anyways, Tom has earned a reputation as an utmost quality chrome plating source for difficult parts, especially pot metal (zinc). He's doing plating for the top customizer legends like Rick Dore. See Tom's workmanship here Well, now he's doing a part for me, shown below. Enjoy: |
 Here's a little pot metal
piece. It is the molding strip that sits on the cowl, filling the
gap between the hood center molding and windshield center post. Tom has already removed old plating and badly corroded metal (zinc), maybe filled some larger pits, and then added a strike coat of nickel, followed by a heavy layer of acid copper. Zinc cannot handle acid copper directly, hence the strike coat of nickel first. It is called a "strike" coat because the nickel bath isn't too friendly to the zinc, either. You just quickly flash a thin, protective coat of nickel on the part. Cyanide copper can be directly applied on zinc, but that's not for DIY's, and many professional shops don't have it either, because cyanide is extremely poisonous - a drop will kill you. Also, cyanide copper is not suitable for building heavy layers of copper. |
 Now the copper surface has been sanded and
buffed to a
high luster, and is ready for the nickel and chrome coats. The part
must be dipped into chrome bath right after the nickel bath, otherwise
the surface becomes passive and needs to be activated again by specific
methods. I don't know, but it might be that Tom had to dip the part in copper bath several times between sandings. The idea is to build the thickness with copper, garadually filling the low spots while you are sanding down the high spots, just like the idea of sprayable body filler. |
 The problem with the chrome bath is that it
requires approximately 10 times more current compared to copper or
nickel, before anything happens. That's why many shops don't have large
enough baths for one-piece bumpers for instance.Now the part is ready. So the layers that make the "triple-chrome-plate" are copper, nickel and chrome. The chrome layer is extremely thin and doesn't offer any protection to the base metal. It only gives the deep shine and protects the nickel from scratches and oxidizing. The nickel layer is heavier, but there are tiny microcracks and pits in it, that you cannot see, but which will expose the base metal to the elements. The only layer that fully and positively insulates the base metal is copper. That is to say, the low-cost chrome parts are done without a copper layer, and will last a couple of seasons in maximum. In Finland, they won't survive a single winter. Okay Tom, I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH ! |