Cataloging/Organizing for Plating, What's your system? Options

[bbrock]

I'm getting close to a point where I need to start thinking about having hardware plated and figure it will be a good "while watching TV" task to sort all the doodads. The thought of dumping all these nuts, bolts, and other goodies that I have carefully bagged and labeled into a bucket for the plater is intimidating. Wondering what system others use to help sort parts when they come back all shiny. Part of me thinks I could just catalog the specialty stuff and use the PET to figure out which common nuts and bolts go where on reassembly. What do you do?

Also, anyone have a mail order plater they can recommend? I may have found a plater in Billings, 100 miles away, but haven't called. Info I have is bare minimum, (name, address, phone number), no idea what services they offer. Google street view shows an old crusty building with no signage.

[gandalf_025]

Just google zinc platers in your zip code...
or call any local restoration shops in your area
ask them where they get theirs done.. They will usually tell you.
There are “ experts” out there you can send everything to
that advertise on some of these sites, but they charge a whole
lot of money...

[bbrock]

Just google zinc platers in your zip code...
or call any local restoration shops in your area
ask them where they get theirs done.. They will usually tell you.
There are “ experts” out there you can send everything to
that advertise on some of these sites, but they charge a whole
lot of money...

Yeah, did that. You get two hits and one of them is in Florida. The other (100 miles away) does chrome and other fancy stuff, but not zinc. I asked them if they knew of any zinc platers in Montana, and they said no. I found a listing for this place in Billings, but the phone number has been disconnected. And yes, prices for the mail order places I've found are pretty insane. There's a customization shop nearby that I left a message with, but don't have much hope of finding anything in my zip code, area code, or state. Montana is a big state with few people. We just passed the 1 million population mark a couple years ago. That was a dark day. We don't have fancy city things like restoration shops and Porsche dealers... thank god. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)