At 11:23 AM -0400 7/18/08, wheelman@nac.net wrote:
>Short and sweet, that Gloria is a beautiful piece of machinery. Please be
>very careful if you plan to clean that chrome. Using bronze wool is no
>guarantee that you will not ruin it. I have used just about everything on
>old chrome that exists out there. One thing you want to be very careful of
>is that some old chrome, particularly French and British will lift off
>like erasing a pencil mark on paper if you are not careful. It is very
>thin.
Chrome plating bonds the chrome (and usually copper and nickel underneath) to the metal. This bond is very strong, and no amount of rubbing can break it. Brass is softer than chrome, so it will not scratch the surface, unlike steel wool.
If the chrome lifts, then this is evidence that the bond already is broken. This happens either because you have a "budget" plating job with no nickel underneath (nickel does not let through water, but chrome does), or the original bond was not good because the surfaces were not clean.
"Good" chrome does not lift. It first form surface oxidation that can be removed with brass wool without leaving a trace. Once it gets deep enough to pit, you still can get a very nice shine, as the pits are extremely small, even though the oxide has bloomed to make them look much larger. Once you have larger areas of rust, there is not much you can do, but remove the loose rust and protect the surface underneath.
If the chrome lifts, you have a problem. Leaving as is means capillary action can introduce moisture between chrome and steel. Removing the loose chrome is my preferred choice, but you destroy the illustion that remains with the flaking chrome. Usually, I find that it makes little difference - the lifting chrome comes off by itself soon enough.
If the bike was planned for a photo shoot, I might try to keep the flaking chrome in place until the shoot is done.
Fortunately for the Gloria, the chrome looks good originally, so the damage on the lugs appears to be mostly superficial.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.bikequarterly.com