Copy Chrome II on Pot Metal

[wbrown]

I've been trying to brush plate several pot metal pieces from a truck for some time now. They are the door handles and window cranks. I stripped off all the paint, polished them to a mirror like finish, clean them with lacquer thinner and am still not sure if I'm doing everything right. At first I though the pieces were aluminum and tried to zincate them. Then, I plated them with the copy chrome II brush kit. The zincate kit turned the pieces a dull grey, but the brush kit let a yellowish color along with very distinctive dark grey and black areas. I buffed this all out and after getting tired of polishing the pieces once a week looked up more info about the brush kit using the copy chrome kit and found the web page about the pot metal primer. Since it describe my problem with my pieces perfectly, I ordered the one gallon kit. I followed the directions to a 't' except I used lacquer thinner to degrease the pieces instead of the Caswell degreaser kit. Anyways, I left the pieces in the tank for an hour while simmering and they looked like the process had worked. After rinsing the pieces and letting them cool, I tried to brush plate them again with the copy chrome II kit. Again, they came out a dull yellowish color with the black and dark grey borders. I ended up buffing and polishing this all out again. The pieces look good for the most part, but when I hold them up to the light, they have a cloudy look in the reflection. I guess my question is how should they look after the copy chrome II brush plating? I mean is this normal? Should they be shinny and only need a little buffing and polishing or is this normal and will require buffing and polishing each time I brush plate?

thanks,
Wes.

[mcaswell]

You always need to polish your parts before you plate them. The condition of the part before you plate it, dictates how it will look after you've plated it.

You really need to be sure which metal you have before you try a plating process, or you could have very bad results. For example, if you think you have a piece of aluminum and you try to copper plate it using our copper plating kit, but the part is really pot metal, your part will likely dissolve away in the acidic copper solution.

I suggest you post a problem report in our PRS system if you continue to have problems.