Cadmium & Black Phosphate Plating

After thoroughly cleaning and bead blasting all CAD plated parts, they were taken to a plating service a couple of hours away. I elected to drop them off and pick them up as I have family and work contacts in the area. The new source has a long history of motorcycle restorations and the plating came out great.

The smaller parts came out very shiny while larger ones had a frosted finish to them. The only issue I had was that the larger parts were scratched up. Maybe during the heat treat process to remove embrittlement?  Bead blasting took care of this and it was not an issue.  My last plating experience came out well but I had to re-thread everything. This does not seem to be an issue this time and will be a significant time saver. I think the prep work I did this time - documented in a  previous post - enabled this success. CAD adds thickness. If you do not strip the old CAD before adding new you will need to clean up the threads. I had a few threads to clean up this time but not many. 

Out of the box and ready to sort. 

I am matching them up to the parts book and photos I took. 

Making progress....

Spokes look great. 

Scratched parts .... on to the bead blaster. 

Matching up oil cooler hardware. 

I also had the black cap screws and lock washers finished in “black phosphate”. I have used home blue kits on firearms in the past and have not had the best luck with it. These parts came out well but do not exactly match the original plating although they are very close. Phosphate is a durable finish that should not wear or rust any time soon. I think it will look fine and work well although I plan to research other options next time.

Original on the right, black phosphate on the left. 

Another diversion.....granpa's 1964 Coleman 220F.....not running since the late 1960's.....carb cleaned in the ultrasonic, a new generater and mantles installed, and we're ready to go.... a carb rebuild is a carb rebuild.