Thread: Stainles trim

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I'd also be interested in this. my '51 chevy has a couple peices that are dented/ mangled and have holes from sheet metal screws in them, and there not available repro.

Yea the guy that used to do mine could repair those holes and you'd never know they were there. He'd send it back it looked like new.

Back in the late'60's early '70's there wa a tech editor for Street Rodder that published a whole series of articles on the subject. I can't remember his name, he drove a '40 Coupe he'd had for ages, but the articles were well written and full of descriptive pictures. I remember it was labor intensive and very tedious and when done thay looked good as new.

According to my limited experience in plating shops there are two possible cases.

First if the piece is chrome PLATED it should be chemically stripped by reverse plating in an acid bath. Then standard body techniques can be used such as welding but no bondo use. Then it needs to be polished smooth as the steel form and then plated successively with Cu, Ni and finally Chrome by a plating shop. Each step will actually be in two parts with a "strike" plate step where higher voltage is used at a lower amperage followed by a "plate" step which uses just enough voltage to plate that metal but with higher current (amperage) to carry a lot of metal to the surface. Thus the plating shop will do a Cu strike and plate, a Ni strike and plate and then a Cr strike and plate. The way to repair pitting is to use extra heavy or multipe layers of Cu followed by polishing. For instance a corroded hood ornament made from some white metal casting will require several, perhaps many, steps of Cu plating followed by polishing the shape after each layer of plate to fill in pit holes. There is an element of craftsmanship at that step. The three metals used are sequenced to provide an internal voltage difference between the layers in such a way as to discourage corrosion, the use of three metals is standard procedure.

Second, the trim may be entirely solid stainless steel as I recall is the case for '40 Ford trim. In that case body work techniques can be used like a hammer and dolly with a fine pointed hammer followed by buffing of the stainless. If there are holes, I believe you can get welding done with a stainless rod and then polish the result. If seams show, more stainless weld can be built up and then polishing and buffing can be used to smooth out the weld.

Clearly either way it is a labor of love and tedious. I am most familiar with the plating process and remind folks that nothing comes out of the tank any shinier than when it went in, meaning that a good polishing wheel is essential between plating steps. In the two plating shops I worked in there were teams of folks who just did polishing and folks who set up the plating tanks and my job at those sites was maintaining the concentration of the chemicals in the large baths within the allowed concentration limits. Imagine my surprise one day when I looked into a 300 gallon tank and my oh my there was a complete motorcycle chassis in there getting Ni plated! How did whoever get that through the security gate? Reminds me of Johnnie Cash's Cadillac one piece at a time. Anyway to answer the question, the best thing to do is work with a local plating shop and be willing to pay their price for restorative plating. As to welding stainless you need to find out how/where/who to/will be able to weld holes in stainless trim with a stainless rod and then polish, polish, polish.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don Shillady