Saving Old Seagulls

Looking class H-A, whats the price of chroming a leg these days??

About £100.00 if you accept decorative chrome, which I feel is a waste of time and money. I had a quote for industrial hard-chrome, which was £215.00 plus VAT. I declined.

seagull101 wrote:Looking class H-A, whats the price of chroming a leg these days??

Not sure last thing I had chromed was a minimum charge 0f £45.

Will give these guys a go again as they are close.

http://www.beckworth.net/

Have used them before a while ago, will go and have a chat, last time they did say that they could chrome for marine use.

MarkHLD had his OA chromed in Gosport I think, have not seen him on here for a while.
Could have been http://cranbourne-chrome-limited.business.site/

My local chroming firm Derby Platers is a high end outfit, I paid them a visit a couple of years ago and showed him a SD leg. He told me £75 which is their minimum charge.

Their work is superb though, they had some E type bumpers and overriders which were something else to see.

If you can do a lot of the polishing yourself it will be cheaper.

I wonder how much extra each drive tube will be after the initual £75? I'm waiting until l have four SD tubes ready for rezincing. I'll find somwhere local.

What is the best way of polishing chrome? I have some NOS later tubes that have a few scratches.

Brilliant thread. Cutting and boring drive tube flange and adding new pipe seems a perfect fix for corroded tubes and probably more cost affective than having old ones ground back. Need to find a hobbyist with a lathe!

I would be pretty happy with the £45 or even the £75 but its my location thats the problem , its FV and FVP bits i'm needing done.

ps sorry for the thread hijack.

Getting it back together, will run it before re-chroming.
loads more to do, gearbox is the next big thing.

Hugz

If there are high and low spots, start with 1200 grit wet & dry and some WD40 (duck oil in Oz?) then repeat with metal polish (popular brand here Autosol). Very good standards achievable with this method. Wear old clothes.

Lately I've been removing chrome from a 40 exhaust and it is surprisingly difficult to remove so don't be too worried about giving it some elbow. However, chrome seems to stick to brass (and cast iron) better than mild steel.

But if If you really want it to sparkle then get the spindle out.

Very good. I'll try on the bit that goes into the waterpump housing first. Some polish compounds are quite abrasive so a bit of trial and error.

My spindle machine blew up! Karma for ill gotten gain Another will appear, I'm sure....

To remove Chrome, then Nickel then Copper which is the order they have to (chemically/electrically dissolved/unplated )on steel, the copper layer not needed on brass (brass tube is about 80% copper), just go to the chrome platers & have them strip it which is what they do, before it get's re-plated!

REMOVE THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM ON THE BIT THAT GOES INTO THE WATER PUMP HOUSING! Over polishing this area is why the lower unit falls off.

Good point but would polishing really remove that much substance? If grinding back l would understand the concern.

Might be an interesting exercise to measure how much can be removed before pinch bolt is no longer effective.

If you conduct a pole you'd probably find several, this is what happens if you don't instruct the chrome platers NOT to POLISH in any way the bottom 1 5/8" of a drive shaft tube before plating!

It's been discussed several times over the last 15 years on here.

Agreed. I'm not going to the platers, I'm just polishing some surface scratches. Maybe I'm using the wrong use of the word polishing. If I have a scratch on my car I polish it away.... These are NOS.

Edit: Aaah, I see the confusion, I mentioned rezincing SD tubes at the platers and the next line I mentioned polishing chrome NOS ones. Two different procedures altogether.

Have straighten out the pepper pot intake, looks a lot better, now need to make washer and spring.
Nylon former worked well, thanks Charles for the advice.

Next bit I will do is the tiller arm, will replace tiller tube as it is quite rusty.
Will heat it up to get the end off, as it is a hard shape to hold to bore out, will come apart if I get it red hot.

H-A