I will display some of our own projects and photos here, some are purely for demonstration purposes, some are part of our restorations.
Belt buckle plating
I have had several people ask me about gold plating, how to do it and what you can plate with it so I thought I would add some photos here and explain what I did to plate an old belt buckle. I will also have a video on the videos page showing just what I did.
An old tin plated steel belt buckle as you can see, most of the old plating has worn off.
I stripped the rest of the tin mechanically.
After the old plating was removed I then soaked in the hot GP1 alkaline cleaner for 30 minutes followed by a good rinse.
The next step was into the dry acid pickle bath for 5 minutes and rinse again.
It was then into the Replica plating tank for 40 minutes on a current setting of about 120mA per square inch with agitation on.
Then out the tank and a good rinse.
Then out with the gold brush plating equipment.
Now clean and activate the buckle as per instructions. Clean with the alkaline cleaner for a start and then a good rinse.
Then activate with the acid etch/activator solution for 5 minutes and again another good rinse.
Now for the Gold! Brush plate for 10 minutes with warmed gold solution set on 9V and keep the wand moving all the time until a nice even gold plate is applied.
Last rinse and allow to dry.
From an old worn buckle to a bit of BLING in no time at all!
Montessa Honda 123 Kickstart project.
The above photo shows the state of the kickstart at the start.
There is no chrome left on it at all. There is some nickel left and the rest is steel, some areas are quite pitted.
The first step was to de-grease in GP1 alkaline cleaner. I had a tank set up with a heater in it and just immersed the parts in it for 30 minutes before rinsing well and drying.
Next step is into the electrolytic cleaning tank to remove the rust from the pits. I usually leave parts in there for about 12 hours if they are not too pitted. When I take the parts out of there I will scrub them with a stiff bristled brush in hot soapy warer then rinse well.
Next step, while the parts are still wet, is into the dry acid pickle for 10 minutes, then rinse well again and this time into the replica chrome tank for 10 minutes. Once the parts have been flash plated they are rinsed and go straight into the acid copper plating tank.
 # You can see that footrest part of the kickstart is a salmon pink colour. The kickstart shaft was the same colour but I have wire wooled that part to show the colour of the copper underneath. You can just make out the difference in thickness of the wire I used to suspend the parts with. I doubled the thickness of the wire which is 1mm and that took about 2 hours in the plating tank at a temperature of 18C and at 100ma per sq" and 6v current. The parts were then rinsed and buffed.
As you can see, the shaft has been buffed. There is a small pit that has been filled with solder, flatted and buffed and you can just make it out below the shiny bit in the centre of the photo. Use a solvent to remove the buffing compound and then into the GP1 cleaner again for 15 minutes before rinsing and into the dry acid pickle for 5 minutes. I then removed the part from the pickle and rinsed well.
The final step is into the replica chrome plating tank.
This is straight out of the plating tank. I left it part plated as I took the part to the autojumble to show the various stages that can be done to repair pitted parts.
This area was the badly pitted area on the first photo and the part that I filled with solder. It is not visible now, the next step will be to buff but I will do that when I finish the parts. Even though the parts have not been buffed, you can see how shiny they are just out the tank!
I will be adding more soon! | 
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