How to strip and re-nickel-chrome parts

A. You should be able to use nitric acid to take off the chrome plating. Then just re-scour or rebuff the parts and you should be good to go. Thats usually all we have to do.

A. Nitric strips nickel. Hydrochloric strips chrome.

A. Hi Lawrence
I'm in Australia so can't help you on site.
Really feel you should link in with one of the service chemists of the major suppliers that you feel comfortable with, as you need more than the simple assistance people are trying to provide.

A. Mr D,

This is a fairly simple process. I don't know the condition of the plated parts, but you can strip the chrome in a muriatic acid ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] bath, 30 percent acid/70 percent water,then depending on the condition of nickel, you can light polish nickel, with a polishing wheel coated with 320 turkish emory. This will remove light surface imperfections, such as roughness. You can then re-clean and neutralize in a pickle. This is sufficient for a good bond of nickel on top of reworked nickel. This is provided that the first nickel coating has properly bonded to plated part. If not, polishing may cause nickel to begin peeling from part, in which case you will have to strip nickel from part, using sulfuric acid on a reverse current bath. Care must be taken when working with this type of bath, and should be done by an experienced plater or chemical engineer.
A proper bonded nickel will save you a lot of work and headache,whenever reworking rejected plated parts. To achieve satisfactory results in your bright nickel plating, refinishing and polishing of metal is just as important as the plating itself. Parts must be properly cleaned in a suitable cleaning solution with current, rinsed in clean water, then pickled, and rinsed. Try to keep copper away and out of pickle bath, such as hooks, copper bars. Copper will contaminate pickle, causing a thin copper film on surface of parts. Nickel will not bond properly, and reworking of parts will become costly.

A. Hi. Please search the site for "Wood's Nickel Strike". That is the best way to reactivate nickel plating so that a second layer of nickel plating will stick to it.

Regards,

A. Hi Junior. Sorry, we can't suggest sources here because it encourages spam and for other reasons, but at the bottom of the page you will see a button for "Jobshops" who offer plating services. The 'chrome stripper' that people are talking about here is simply hydrochloric acid / muriatic acid available at a hardware store, but there's a lot more to stripping and replating than just dipping into a tank of chemicals. "Reasonable" is relative, but it's probably going to cost you $75 or more to get a plumber to fix a 10¢ washer, a mechanic to make a small adjustment, or a plating shop to do a single small piece ... because time is money. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Dave. It should be okay, but nickel plating gradually turns slightly yellowish with time (not gold or brass colored, just not bright and silvery colored). So the initial color may look shinier than the older parts, but it should mellow out.

Regards,