Industrially Yours: Electroplating

Until this year, any articles requiring re-chroming or silvering had to be sent out of Nelson. Much of this work (and there was a great deal) went to Greymouth to the electroplating firm operated by Mr Tom Pratt. Nelson's Industrial Development Committee, and Mr Pratt, realised that the works would be better placed in Nelson and so late last year Mr Pratt shifted to Nelson. The firm has a small but skilled staff and the work they handle ranges from small nuts and bolts to silver utensils of all descriptions and motor body parts requiring re-metalling. We are not going to attempt to describe the operation used by the firm, except to say that Mr Pratt takes pride in using the same process as used by Rolls Royce (nickel copper, nickel, chrome) for plating metal. This process involves the stripping of old metal from the object to be processed, polishing it immersion in the copper solution tank, more polishing, immersion in the nickel solution, more polishing and finally into the chrome solution. There are several intermediary steps in this process, but these mainly involve washing and cleaning. To handle this work, the firm has to have expensive metal solutions and Mr Pratt estimates that in his tanks are something like $4000 worth of solutions.

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Peter Scott removes a bumper from the copper tank.

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Tom Pratt immerse a silver tea-pot i concentrated sulphu ic acid to strip the old metal.

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In the polis shop Bill Edwards polishe a car grill.

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The proof of the pudding – Tom gets a reflection from the polished surface of a finished bumper

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John Stansbury on a polisher