Re: Plating a mpc?


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Posted by js on September 22, 2001 at 17:20:09:

In Reply to: Plating a mpc? posted by Steve Inman on September 22, 2001 at 13:48:01:

All plating "sticks" best to copper, seemingly, and copper is used as the "glue" for most quality plating jobs. They call that "copper flash" (ie: a flash-plating of copper on top of the base metal and under the desired coating). It is customary to plate gold over silver plating (my best guess) because gold tends to wear off a bit prematurely, and the silver underneath leaves a "back-up" coating. If your mouthpiece absolutely "gleams" (no nicks nor scratches that bother you) when it is clean and polished, you can send it ("perfectly" clean - as close as you can manage) to

Anderson Silver Plating Co, Inc.
541 Industrial Parkway
Elkhart, Indiana 46515

Those very small areas where there is no silver are of no consequence, as far as plating the entire mouthpiece with gold.

I recently had "old faithful" re-guilded and had it done heavily (for an extra charge). I BUFFED my mouthpiece prior to sending it to them in order to remove all tiny nicks and scratches and to get a "mirror" finish in the gold on top of my buffed "mirror" finish. The "heavy" gold ended up being even smoother than my (excellent) buffing job - much like the appearance of new nickel plating (extra-extra smooth). The added thickness is negligable, as "regular" thickness is only about .0004" and "heavy" is double that - still only about .0008" (not even one thousandth of an inch).

Newly gold plated mouthpieces are clearly slicker against one's skin than new silver plated mouthpieces, assuming the same quality of buffing job.


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