zinc plater recommendation

rsporsche

rsporsche

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so who has a recommendation for a zinc plater / coater that does nice work for finished items like trunk latches and other visible things? i have been searching around the ATL area and i keep finding only commercial places that do big bulk orders or only do new things in large volumes. its one thing to do a barrel full of nuts / bolts ... but its different when you are doing dipped things. most of the things i have to do are clear zinc
 
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only as a last resort. i want it done right and really well. i don't really want to deal with the chemicals at home.
 
Scott,
I just did about 10 lbs of fasteners other odd larger parts. I used Apex Anodizing & Metal Finishing in Sparks NV. They have 2 locations but the one in Sparks is the one you need. Their phone is 775-355-8121 and they will give you a quote. I used USPS small 2 day to ship there and they used the same to return. CA is pretty hard on this while NV is not. I talked with Jana getting the quote and they got the parts turned around in a week. I was happy with the results.
I know it's a long ways from where you are versus my location but the 2 day USPS may make it a reasonable solution.
Regards, Jon
 
Scott, you know good results of plating lie in the work that goes on before you ship it out? Squeeky clean is the word.
Rusted bits get plated all right, but any pits made by rust will remain pits. Just plated pits.

If you blast surfaces to get rid of rust they will get rough, giving a dull zinc sheen vs non blasted surfaces that are rezinced which keep their mirrorlike smooth sheen.
If blasting is needed to get the rust out, find the smallest glass bead you can find for that (close to) original look.
 
eriknetherlands said:
Scott, you know good results of plating lie in the work that goes on before you ship it out? Squeeky clean is the word.
Rusted bits get plated all right, but any pits made by rust will remain pits. Just plated pits.

If you blast surfaces to get rid of rust they will get rough, giving a dull zinc sheen vs non blasted surfaces that are rezinced which keep their mirrorlike smooth sheen.
If blasting is needed to get the rust out, find the smallest glass bead you can find for that (close to) original look.
Click to expand...
Is this the time for vapor honing therefore which will keep a bit more of a sheen?
 
in my case, there was no rust. some of the parts had been painted ... so i had to get the paint off. some just had years of junk that was left on them - grease, dirt, etc.
i used the blasting media available in @bdigel's blaster ... it seems to be relatively fine. some of the items are things like the pushrods on the throttle linkage - just want them to look good (better than they did / better than they would painted ... maybe they would look better powder coated). some are things like the hood latches that the PO didn't remove when repainting the car black. the same thing happened to the trunk latches - they didn't get removed and had black paint on them.

so here's the follow up question - if they have been blasted, what is the best way to get them as smooth as possible? to get as good of a finish as possible ... i guess it could all be hit / polished up with 400 sandpaper
 
rsporsche said:
.....
so here's the follow up question - if they have been blasted, what is the best way to get them as smooth as possible? to get as good of a finish as possible ... i guess it could all be hit / polished up with 400 sandpaper
Click to expand...

Yep, that'll do it. The finer you sand, the less visible the sanding lines will be.
I even spin the head of screws and bolts in a drill with some fine sandpaper. Mighty nice result.
 
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