silver plating question.

I am looking at silver plate kits and processes for my headlight reflectors. 1934 olds they are missing some plating and need redone. can anyone sugust a good product or method please. thank you.

Try here....http://forums.aaca.org/f120/updated-headlight-suggestions-268577.html

Try here....http://forums.aaca.org/f120/updated-headlight-suggestions-268577.html

Nickel plate the reflectors and send to Uvira in Oregon.

Uvira. The same coating on the light that the dentist uses. My reflectors will hurt your eyes if you look directly were the bulb goes.... in the sunlight.

Bite the bullet. get the reflectors nickel plated and call 1 541 474 5050. Bill is a very interesting guy. I had a great time talking to him. He once or twice, circum navigated the US in a Model A Ford. The coating process he does is very reasonable.

Bill H

Uvira. The same coating on the light that the dentist uses. My reflectors will hurt your eyes if you look directly were the bulb goes.... in the sunlight.

Bite the bullet. get the reflectors nickel plated and call 1 541 474 5050. Bill is a very interesting guy. I had a great time talking to him. He once or twice, circum navigated the US in a Model A Ford. The coating process he does is very reasonable.

Bill H

Am wondering about availability of silver or aluminum coating for glass reflectors on Acetylene cars? Any sources or suggestions

F

I agree it would be a fun thing to attempt doing; you could have fun by experimenting and coating say, various brass or copper items, or even steel. I believe you can find some instructions in several U tube episodes. As I recall, one can just as easily reverse the direction of plating. I think important factors for the purpose of shininess is to attain a very stable DC voltage, and preparing the surface to a super clean status is also important. In college, One lab experiment was to plate copper out of a bluish solution onto a clean nail, weigh before and after, then determine the concentration of cupper in the blue solution. The nail came out a beautiful copper plate. I believe we only needed 4.6 volts or so to run the experiment. This I say with memory degraded by about 25 years, so no guarantees.

I'm thinking plating something with surface area the size of a reflector might be difficult with a home plating system.

I think it was Lancaster Glass in Ohio that made the

reflectors for gas lamps,,They were projection lamp

and traffic lamp parts,!!,,,Now out of business

but did anyone buy the business,whole or part,,

Cheers,,Ben

If you want to do it yourself there is a lot of information at https://www.ishor.com/index.php. This is Shor International and they handle equipment for precious metal recovery from electronics. Their equipment is home-user sized and can be used to plate or remove plate. There is a lot of process information on the site also. Just remember that many of these processes use very hazardous chemicals and whatever you use and create please handle carefully and dispose of properly!

thanks to everyone i will post some before and after pics soon i hope.

Hudson33 asks a good question, can you electroplate directly onto glass? If not I know you can powder coat glass and maybe that can be used as an intermediate layer to nickel plate before sending to UVIRA. Maybe substitute the glass reflector with a metal one. Perhaps ask Bill Atwood at UVIRA. He knows his business better than any of us.

Regarding resilvering glass mirrors in acetylene lamps (mangin mirrors); they are back silvered and should be relatively simple to resilver. Google "resilvering glass mirrors" and you can find instructions.