gold-plated parts???

[aceboogie]

Hey guys I'm an electroplater/surface finisher by trade and was wonderin' if you guys have ever seen any real gold parts on a savage besides wiring related. I was thinking that after I build my super basher I wouldn't mind gold plating some parts for a show-sav. I haven't seen any but thats not saying much lol. The company I used to work for uses cyanide solution plating and it works really good. Looks perfect and they use 99.95 pure gold in a cyanide solution. I've plated all kinds of stuff for practice and can actually get a pretty good deal on the gold. Let me know what you think and maybe what hop-ups to get to plate. I'm new to the Savy but not so much to R/Cs. Thanks in advance fellas.

 

[Shaun]

welcome to the forum!! hmmm gold plating, interesting idea...

 

[Hypnotiq]

Bling'd out savy!! Welcome to the forums!

 

[MikeK1981]

Well I would think that Fast Lane Machine (FLM) makes plenty of nice looking aluminum parts you could plate. You can build almost a whole savage out of FLM stuff.

 

[Pope]

I have some 14k yellow gold linkage parts on my truck as I am a goldsmith and it was what I had on hand when I was custom fabing some parts.

Just as a bit of advice Gold plating something like alum is going to be a bad idea for a few reasons.

1. alum is a porious metal and will just absorb most of it making it very pricey to plate.

2. Gold is very soft and will ware off very fast.

3. To do a good plating you are going to have to have the piece cyanide striped than brass plated than nickle plated in order to keep the alum for absorbing all the gold. Which makes it very pricey as well.

4. No mater what you do you will not be able to polish the gold to a good shin again after it is worn. Doing so will just strip it off.

 

[aceboogie]

Thx guys. Pope, you are right, it will have to be copper electric nickel and then gold plated. They also do electroless nickel. It's pretty cool. As far as shine goes it probably wont get run much. It's just something to build and take time on. I'm in no rush for a all-show truck, but I want to build one. I never really put 2 and 2 together till last night and figured I'd ask and see if it was as crazy as it initially seemed. Oh, and I've never plated gold straight on al. It always gets copper and nickel plated first. I'm learning how to keep/or make some parts smoother by brite-dipping before rinse and then nickel with the copper having a very polished look to it before hand. The gold does look alot better in the end but it's a process. Thanks again all...

 

[aceboogie]

One more thing Pope, I was thinking around 50-70 microinches should be sufficient and on parts that hinge/pivot/rub just leave nickel. I know gold is soft and malleable but I'm a lil rough on my rcs and Nickel seems to be the strongest.