Re: [CR]California Chrome Plating Shops Recommendations?

(Example: Racing:Beryl Burton)

To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]California Chrome Plating Shops Recommendations?
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:20:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: donald gillies <gillies@ece.ubc.ca>

Cyclart doesn't have its own chrome plating operation - they farm it out to some shop in North County. There are maybe 10 chrome platers in san diego, and several in northern Mexico, too.

'Equality Plating' in La Mesa does the chrome for brian baylis and joe bell and bill holland cycles. Most people don't understand that stripping of chrome is reasonably cheap and quick, and plating is almost as cheap (although it's a 3-step process : acid bath, nickel plating, then chrome plating).

it's the hourly rate of the polisher that makes chrome expensive, as a fork takes at least 90 minutes ($90), and a frame may take many hours (like 5-8) to polish.

Equality Plating has a great deal of experience with bicycles, but lately have gotten very expensive, supposedly because of environmental regulations. In the past 4 years several competing San Diego shops have been shut down by the EPA, so Equality Plating is typically overloaded and has a 6-week delay, with the polishing step being the bottleneck.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA, USA