Rechroming tools?

[Steve-o]

I was wondering if its possible and or feasable to rechrome older tools. Its aweful when you got a good wrench with part of the
chrome peeling or flaking.I thought someone might know about this here.Thanks,
Steve

[amertrac]

I have been thinking the same thing only I would like some of my favorites that were never chrome done.
I remember when I was running harleys i used to send stuff to an outfit in maw waa new jersey to have it done. it was expensive then It will probably be real costly now .

[scottg]

Not really
 There is caswell or something like that. They sell do it yourself kits. The kits are expensive, you have to fill your shop with buckets of carefully temperature controlled chemicals
 and its basically too much work and costs too much for just a few tools.

  Plating shops will be happy to take the job, but it'll cost roughly 7 times what the tool is worth.  As far as I know, even guys who work in plating shops don't have toolboxes overflowing with quadruple hard plated and mirror polished "show chrome" tools.
 Your best shot at replating is to get your brother a job in the bumper shop, and sneak in on sundays once in a great while. 
 
 If it was easy, every one of us would have boxes of gleaming tools.
           And we don't
  yours Scott
 

[Papaw]

I used to get small motorcycle parts done, but it was expensive unless you were patient enough to wait until the chromer could slip it in a larger batch. The preparation time is longer than the chroming. Parts have to be clean and all the old chrome gone, then buffing and polishing, then nickel plating, then chromed and polished again. Might not be that way now, but I bet it is not cost effective.

[scottg]

The preparation time is longer than the chroming. Parts have to be clean and all the old chrome gone, then buffing and polishing, then nickel plating, then chromed and polished again. Might not be that way now, but I bet it is not cost effective.

 Its still the same. Except you left out a step. Steel has to be first copper plated, copper sticks to steel.
 Then nickle plated, nickel sticks to copper.
  Then finally chrome plated, and for tools that suffer hard wear, it would be several times in the chrome.

 If you had a friendly sympathetic shop and you were good enough with polishing equipment to strip the old plate and polish yourself. And had lots of patience and willing to wait until it was convenient for the shop
 You might get a break.

I put up a short article on cold bluing tools. Re-chroming is really not likely, but anyone can blue them.
It starts in the right column
www.wkfinetools.com
  yours Scott

[BruceS]

I was wondering if its possible and or feasable to rechrome older tools. Its aweful when you got a good wrench with part of the
chrome peeling or flaking.I thought someone might know about this here.Thanks,
Steve

You might want to consider electro plating with nickle.   That you can do yourself with a plating kit.    Semi-expensive but not overly out of reach.    Besides nickle has a nice warm look about it.

[Ken W.]

There is a platter here in Buffalo that I used to take things to.They would do small batches and were inexpensive. I built a kit gun 1861 Springfield and had the whole thing nickel plated for $45.00 .Snap On used to offer it for their own tools,but that was awhile ago.

[Stoney]

Thanks ScottG on the cold blue article.  I like that look better than chrome.  Back about the late '70's I bought a special "Snappy racing wrench set."  I didn't like them.  I don't know if they were too slick or too small in diameter, but they never felt right in the hand.

[rusty]

>Its aweful when you got a good wrench with part of the chrome peeling or flaking

>Except you left out a step. Steel has to be first copper plated, copper sticks to steel.

So did some of the tool makers - P

[kxxr]

The Caswell site is very informative. www.caswellplating.com
They have articles on lots of options. Of course, they sell the stuff, so the articles are promotional. Interesting still.

[scottg]

The Caswell site is very informative. www.caswellplating.com
They have articles on lots of options. Of course, they sell the stuff, so the articles are promotional. Interesting still.

 Holy Crap! I actually remembered the name correct off the top of my head?? Hot cha! heehhhee
 But yeah its good reading.  The more you read and consider it though,  you will see why everybody doesn't do it.  Setup takes a lot of room and water, its an involved process to do well.
   And its costly
 yours Scott

[Steve-o]

Thank you everyone.Some good info there for me. :)