Re: Plating de-laminating on a 1995 Bob Jackson frameset.
I know of a plater local to San Diego that is used by SEVERAL KOF builders. And, occasionally, the plating just does not "stick" to the metal. In one instance, the KOF builder masked a frameset, painted it, and then when removing the tape the plating came up. Both KOF's are perfectionists and so the frame builder took the frame back to the plater to start over from scratch.
Delamination might be for any number of reasons, e.g. the metal alloy itself might require triple (copper, nickel, chrome) (vs. double - nickel, chrome) plating, or insufficient cleaning of the lug before plating, or a slight delay causing oxidation between cleaning and plating, or insufficient warmth for the electricity supplied, or insufficient electrolyte - plating is a very tricky business.
I would not blame Bob Jackson for a bad plating job, unless I had evidence that the problem was FREQUENT. The question is, will Bob Jackson do something to make it right ?? If you send him pictures, and you are out-of-country, I would think that he might rebate the cost of the plating, so that you could take it to a brush plater to get it fixed.
I fixed a frameset of mine with a cheapo $28 brush plating kit. There were just a few pea-sized nicks on the frameset. The fixes are in the rear triangle and on one side of the head lugs. The brush plating is a 1-step (nickel-cobalt) process, with a yellow tint. If you know to look for it, the fix is detectable in bright flourescent light - the fixed area is warm (yellow), vs. the normal area which is cooler (blue).
A true brush plater would use double-chrome or triple-chrome, and the fix would be completely undetectable.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA