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.

[burton73]

Brent,

It looks like there is a easy way to do DIY Zinc plating. Look on UTube.

It just takes a small battery and some Zinc metal. Some Washing powder?

After you can dip them to get them the gold look. I have a couple of parts on my sway bar that where not plated and I am going to try. You can make a vibrator cleaner as well.

Now most people would send them out but you may want to try. You could run them in super small run so you do not mix them up. I ordered the stuff to make the gold finish wash and I will have more than I need and can send you some. I got ¼ Lb on the way. Zinc I have coming but may use it all up.

Bob B

[bbrock]

Brent,

It looks like there is a easy way to do DIY Zinc plating. Look on UTube.

It just takes a small battery and some Zinc metal. Some Washing powder?

After you can dip them to get them the gold look. I have a couple of parts on my sway bar that where not plated and I am going to try. You can make a vibrator cleaner as well.

Now most people would send them out but you may want to try. You could run them in super small run so you do not mix them up. I ordered the stuff to make the gold finish wash and I will have more than I need and can send you some. I got ¼ Lb on the way. Zinc I have coming but may use it all up.

Bob B

Hi Bob, I love that guys videos. I've watched most of them. When I first started this project scoping out what was ahead, I looked into the various DIY plating solutions, and got really excited when I saw that one. Then I started thinking about the size (brake calipers) and number of parts I'd need to do for a whole resto project, and the Copy Cad system making more sense. But once you add a power supply, you are into about $300 to get started. I think I should revisit that Utube method and see if I could just scale it up enough to do a brake caliper. Have you tried it on anything that large? Might still be pretty cheap and probably just needs a larger container and maybe a bigger battery. I haven't ruled out the copy cad kit either. Being able to do it myself has a lot of advantages and looks pretty fun too. Like you said, being able to control batches to keep parts sorted would be a huge plus. What kind of fumes are involved? Wondering if this could also be set up as an evening leisure task thing. It would still be nice to know my options for sending the whole batch out to make the comparison though. End of the day, I'm a CSOB so will go with the cheapest practical option, but if the cost gets close, I'll go DIY every time!

Raynekat, great idea. I'll definitely pick one of those up. I've been meaning to get one anyway, but it never crossed my mind for cataloging parts. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/screwy.gif)