Zinc/Cad plating - anyone do it at home?

Blaze

Blaze

The Jeeper Reaper
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Location
Wake Forest, NC
I am starting to restore some cars in my shop. I picked up a 65 Mustang last night and I am going to start working on it this weekend/next week.

A lot of the bolts and things are rusted and crappy looking. I want to make this car really damn good looking so I'm thinking about trying to do some zinc/cad plating in the shop.

I read up on it and it doesn't seem to terribly hard. Kind of time consuming, but if I can figure a way to do a large quantity of bolts at a time (I think I have an idea) it would be awesome.

Anyone do it? Is it worth it?
 
I send my stuff down to a place in SC. Bucket of crap is like 75-100 bucks. They do loose some small stuff every once in a while though. Bolts and nuts.
 
I used to work at Piedmont Aviation in Winston, and they had a shop that did Cad, Zinc, and Anodized plating. All I got from that was , the entire process involves some pretty nasty stuff. Parts have to be near perfectly cleaned and then soaked in a caustic soda bath prior to the plating process. I wouldn't want any of crap around my place, very toxic. You would definitely be better off to find a shop for you plating needs.
 
Or if you have a blast cabinet- clean up the parts yourself and spray them with zinc color paint. Eastwood sells all different colors. I use them all the time... They even have a gold/rainbow kit that looks pretty good.
 
flatbedtoy said:
I used to work at Piedmont Aviation in Winston, and they had a shop that did Cad, Zinc, and Anodized plating. All I got from that was , the entire process involves some pretty nasty stuff. Parts have to be near perfectly cleaned and then soaked in a caustic soda bath prior to the plating process. I wouldn't want any of crap around my place, very toxic. You would definitely be better off to find a shop for you plating needs.
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We can't even spec out CAD plated hardware in any of our new designs at my work due to those reasons.
 
drkelly said:
We can't even spec out CAD plated hardware in any of our new designs at my work due to those reasons.
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Piedmont had a "grandfather" clause with the EPA, or so I was told, because it had been in existence since the 40's. Whole place reminds me of Axis Chemicals in the first Batman movie!
 
spc said:
Or if you have a blast cabinet- clean up the parts yourself and spray them with zinc color paint. Eastwood sells all different colors. I use them all the time... They even have a gold/rainbow kit that looks pretty good.
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I might just blast them and powdercoat them all. I think I can get a zinc color powder.

I don't want to mess with nasty chemicals in my shop, especially since my boys are always helping me in there.
 
So... do you want corrosion resistance? Or just the look of zinc?

When I was working the project to discontinue the use of cadmium treated fasteners and switch to the aluminum flake type coatings, there wasn't actually any legislation that prohibited its use. Things may have changed now though.
 
Falko said:
Damnit, I had almost blocked that portion of my life out of my mind.
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Haha, I forgot that you worked on that project when you were here.
 
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