Gold plating of auto brand emblems

A. Hi, Syd.

There is a book entitled "Electrochemical Metallizing" by Marv Rubenstein with 450 pages of solid information about brush plating.

You'll also find some information by doing a literature search, especially through older journals, since there is always published basic research in this field. The chemicals are used in higher concentration for brush plating than tank plating, and thickening agents like Fumed Silica [affil links] may be added.

But you are probably dealing with some 'proprietary' chemicals here. A supply company paid their chemists to experiment, develop, improve, and perfect the brush plating process by testing thousands of possible additives under various conditions. Some of the additives may not be simple mixes of basic chemicals, but organics synthesized from precursors that are beyond the ability of a hobbyist to make anyway. The suppliers' development effort is paid off through charging more for the proprietary chemical than just the price of the raw chemicals. That's the way the industry works.

So you won't find a supplier who will tell you what they add to their processes. You would need to license a process unless you were going to duplicate the supplier's research efforts. Good luck.

A. The process of gold plating the chrome scripts on vehicles is easy. Strip the chrome, activate the nickel and deposit the gold.

To learn how to do the actual gold plating work, you can purchase a system and work with it, until you know how. Or, you could go to work for a company who already does gold plating and learn that way.

Learning how to do the physical work will not give you the formula.

If you were to go to work for one of the companies currently offering the Gold Plating systems and solutions, I question if you would start in the laboratory where they mix the solutions.

If you were to work for us, you would not be able to learn the mixing process.

I do not know of anyone who will give you information on how to go into competition with them.

A. The best single source of information is the book Ted Mooney mentions in his response. If you search the literature you can find some old formulations that you can prepare. These formulations do an okay job but involve materials that require great care in handling (cyanide etc).

My father developed some of the original solutions over 50 years ago. The proprietary formulations available today are easier to work with. My advise, use the proprietary materials!

A. You can make a fortune at gold plating auto emblems, but you can also make a fortune doing many other things. Portable plating industry are for sales people, you have to go and get the customers, you also need a business license. I would go to Gold Touch [a finishing.com supporting advertiser] if you were going to get started, and Gold Touch [a finishing.com supporting advertiser] does not use cyanide or arsenic.

A. Barrett: I think you are on the right track about this being a job for salespeople. Here's a fact: I've run this website, which enjoys excellent search engine placement, for years, and a BBS for years before that, and printed tens of thousands of postings without receiving even a single inquiry from a consumer who was looking to hire a service to have their auto emblems gold plated!

Clearly there are some people who want their auto emblems gold plated, or can be talked into wanting it, but what does my experience say about inferences that customers will beat a path to your door?

A. Ted: Your response about mobile brush type gold plating being a job for sales people is on the money.

Our customers do make money and are profitable within a very reasonable time frame.

However, the promise of $60,000 a year, and in some instances even more income, is potentially misleading.

Reading misleading ad claims, as well as potentially "self serving statements" does damage to the industry.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to stop misinformation.

I know of at least two instances of people searching the records for relatives who found obvious errors in information about the relatives already on the NET, entered into documents on the NET by some other person. The people found that the person would not make the changes to correct the errors despite obvious evidence of conflicting information.

A. Hi Vivian. Just don't jump to the conclusion that all of this stuff is brand new. Actually, people have been electroplating unusual metals onto unusual substrates for over a hundred years. So I think the first step is to build your library with the 'staples'. Please see our list of 'must-have' books and 'must-have' journals. But, certainly, join the American Electroplaters and Surface Finishers Society (www.nasf.org) to meet and interface with your peers and keep up with changing times. Good luck.