Originally Posted by
thepolyparrot
I've read some very good things about the nickel electro-plating kits you can buy for small parts, too. Have you ever tried any of those?
I have an electroplating rig. I usually use it for silver plating (yep, already considered it...)
To plate in nickel I would just need to get some of the solution/salts, but it is doable.
The main reason manufacturers use nickel plating is because it costs about $2 to plate something, but takes about a hour of labor to actually put a mirror shine on something. WAY cheaper.
After thinking about this and going to check on a couple of my other "fading plating" old hand-wheels, it seems that Singer did this process of not fully polishing, then plating.