Thread: Refurbishing nuts. bolts and misc hardware

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Cool - that system looks perfect for my needs. The caswell setup looked a little bit like overkill. I can already picture myself polishing bolt heads while watching Mythbuster re-runs

Thank you.

try soaking them in a diluted muratic acid (from swimming pool supply store) mixture, then neutralize with baking soda. Be careful with this stuff, don't get it on you or breathe it. It will remove surface rust and pretty much anything else. Treat the cleaned parts/bolts/whatever with something as soon as they are dry or they will start rusting quick.

The tough part is prepping the parts to be re-plated. I have a vibratory polisher that came with "de-rusting" media. I tried leaving the hardware in there for up to a week, and it still wasn't clean. What i wound up doing was sandblasting the parts, and then polishing them on a wire wheel. It's quite time consuming, but the results are great.

I have one of those Eastwood zinc electroplating kits and am very disappointed with the results. It seems like the coating is just too thin. When I polish them, I'd rub through to bare metal almost every time. I've experimented with different durations and even stepped up the voltage, but I just couldn't duplicate the look and durability of the original zinc plating.

To make a long story short, I found that having parts professionally zinc plated wasn't nearly as expensive as I had thought. I usually bring in about 150-200 pieces of stripped and polished hardware, they plate the lot of them in 2-3 days, for less than $100.00. They can also do yellow zinc and black.

Just thought I'd throw my two cents in...hope it helps.

Joe G

I just used new bolts in the metals of my choice ,I looked into refurbishing hardware ,but unless its a restoration,just use matching new hardware for less time and hassle............
I used stainless and yellow zinc coated soo far ......I was able to use which ever head style I wanted in almost any material wanted.
If I were to do any restorations of nuts and bolts at home ,I would use the vibratory polisher and apply a plating such as uses electricity to bond the plating to the fastener ,rather than a spray can of coating.