John:
Good, get some scrap handles and play with them.
I get my phosphoric acid from a pool supply dealer/chemical supplyer down the street from me. You can also try hobby chemical suppliers on the internet.
You can also use NAVEL Jelly to do it. It is mostly phosphoric anyway. Just a little more dilute.
I sandblast with regular old fine white sand that I get at HOME DEPOT.
It sparks when it is taking the chrome off. Once you see the sparking stop...the chrome is gone.
I tried glass beads and they just dont cut like plain old sand.
All I use is a small bin set up also.
You can acid strip the chrome if you heat the hydrocloric up and put the handle in it. It will all of a sudden bubble like you put it in soda and all the chrome will dissapear.
Problem with this is that if you have any pits in the potmetal then it will really attack those areas vigorusly.
The hydrocloric will get down into the metal and give you problems in the form of blisters down the road. I dont know why the phosphoric works but...it does.
As for the pits, After you clean with either the phosphoric or hydrocloric/muratic acid. Scrub the living tar out of the part with a steel toothbrush until you see shiny metal where the zinc metal has been turned dark. After scrubbing if you still see some dark areas in the pits, then drill them out with a dremal.
From there I put a stike plate on the part, and then into the acid copper for at least a hour. Then I solder up the pits, sand them down along with sanding the surface of the part. After that its back into the acid copper to cover the solder and build up the surface some more.
Then you can buff, plate with nickel, and chrome.
I left out the cleaning and buffing parts inbetween the copper/nickel/chrome.
Its a long process and takes patience.
Keep at it!
48 Buick
Thanks for the tips 48Buick....
I did try a few pieces of copper pipe, buffing pre and post plating, and it came out real nice. The handle I tried was my worst one, I was willing to give it a try. I can scrounge up a lot of later model handles, even cut them apart, for "test pieces" before I dunk one of my good handles.
Where can I buy phosphoric acid?
What do you sandblast with? I have a small bin setup and use silicon carbide (Black Beauty, very fine grit), but I have a hard time beleiving that it would strip chome. I did most of my handles with ScotchBrite roloc discs, but it was too hard to get the crevices.
One of my friends HAS sucessfully acid de-plated a pot metal handle, and then nickle plated it. Send me a pic, looks nice. Fluke?
Most of the handles are pretty dood to start with, but some have pits down in that crevice "rib" area. How best to address these? Dental drill pits with a Dremel? How to fill? I bought some of Caswells Solder-it, will that work?
Thanks for any other tips. I am sold on the Copy Chrome if I can get it to work well. I am a partner in a small resto/parts biz (
www.zarwerks.com) and expect to do a dozen or so of these handles a year.
John H.[/quote]