Chrome Plating Recommendation?

Good luck finding one. I tried several different places around the DC area and you would think they were using 24K gold for plating and taking weeks to get it done. Depending on the part, you may be better off sending them off to a shop in Pennsylvania or New York. On another forum recently a member from the Washington area had to send his wheels to the West Coast to get them done. Most of shops I looked at in DC, MD and VA could do small things like motorcycle parts.

The key to chroming is surface prep. To re-chrome a part usually means stripping the old chrome off and removing imperfections from the surface. Any imperfections will be amplified by the chrome process. Then the part is suspended in a solution and electrically charged. The electroplating process is quick but the surface prep is not.

 

Bob Smith Coachworks in Gainesville Tx.
Few cars are supposed to have chrome as perfect as a show winning Harley Davidson. Bob makes it appropriate for the car it is going on.

Nothing is lost or damaged.

 

GRAVES in Alabama

 

Any service business that is good is going to have a big back log. As far as price, the plating industry has been hit hard by environmental regulations and insurance costs. It has caused many to close. I was talking to the owner of one who was told during an annual fire inspection that if his building caught on fire they would not even attempt to put it out for fear of mixing the cyanide and sulfuric acids and poisoning the neighborhood. You can imagine how much the insurance companies like that. Most areas in the country will no longer approve license requests for chrome plating shops.

 

Closest to you is probably Librandi in Middletown, PA outside of Harrisburg. They do a lot of AACA work. Interestingly there are a number of chrome shops located in the Erie, PA area