You could try a brush plating kit. The one with the gel from APSCO gives a brighter nickel than the ones you get in liquid form from Caswell. Now that the polishing has been done, a touch up with any metal polish will probably be enough to get it ready to replate. You will have to wash off any polishing residue though. I use Fantastic followed by a spray of ammonia to do that.
Ron L -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Antique Phonograph List Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2014 5:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Phono-L] Columbia BI Sterling -- nickel-plated parts Hi, everybody. I picked up a nice Columbia BI Sterling this summer, and have been trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that the nickel-plating on the horn, tone arm, reproducer and back bracket is faded and splotchy. I thought this might be better left to a professional, so I found a guy in my area on the internet and took it to him for polishing. Big mistake! He accomplished exactly nothing except stripping the nickel plating off the reproducer (brass underneath), and charged me anyway. He couldn't even guess what the issue was with the plating -- only said he'd tried his best. So now I'm worse off than when I started. So, what's my next move? Is there anyone in New England, Boston or north, who does nickel electroplating? Any idea how much that would cost? Are there any products and/or techniques I should try myself? (I don't have access to a polishing wheel or anything like that.) And does anyone have a nice Columbia Analysing reproducer they'd care to sell me? (I also need a crank and a lid latch, if anyone has either of those.) Thanks! _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org
