I need some

[Ed Nye]

some sort of home brew to get chrome off of bronze. I won't be polishing it after, but I don't want scratched either.
Thanks, Ed

[Wayne Jeffers]

Ed,

I think this was discussed not long ago. Try the search feature.

IIRC, the best bet is probably to take it to one of the places that plates in chrome and let them remove it with some sort of electrolysis process. (Kinda the reverse of the way they plate the stuff.)

Wayne

[TomRobb]

Yah, Ed, Wayne's got it right. Getting it off is just the reverse of getting it plated on.

[NormMessinger]

Man! That really burns me up. Take a perfectly good bronze casting and then chrome plate it. It don't seem right.

--Norm

[John B]

I've had a couple of bucket loads of fittings dechromed by that process. Come out like new.

[ken mcclure]

The inexpensive way is to stand next to the fittings, speak slowly and clearly, and say (with all the sincerity you can muster) "Boy. I LOVE this chrome. I hope it doesn't peel off or something."

The gremlins will go to work and it should fly off in a couple weeks.

[Jamie Hascall]

Ed,

A few years back I checked with one of the plating companies about stripping the chrome from the barrels of some bronze bodied winches I got used. He quoted me about $50 to do the batch of them. It's what they'd have to do first if they were going to chrome them again. Let me know if there's a minimum weight/cost figure that you can work up to. I'll be happy to split the cost with you if throwing in the winches ends up as less per pound or visit.

Jamie

[Bob Cleek]

Years ago, like maybe 40, when I was a little kid, I still remember reading what at the time seemed like a fascinating article in Popular Mechanix or something like that about how to do your own chrome plating or some such. Anyhow, they had this thing rigged up with a jar of some chemical solution and a car battery charger. You reversed the polarity on the charger to strip the stuff, as I recall. (The curse of a photographic mind that I never ran through the fixer long enough... fading, fading...) Anybody know about that approach to stripping crappy chrome off bronze?

[Ed Nye]

Bob,
That is what I'm after. The last time I checked a shop here in Seattle they quoted about the same as having the winches replated. I figured at the time that was nuts, you had to get to old chrome off before you could put new on. I couldn't figure why they didn't want to do the work (why they quoted so high). So I decided to let it fall off by its self. Now of course it looks like he--.
Ed

[Paul Scheuer]

I had this stuff stripped so long ago that I don't remember the cost, but it couldn't have been that bad (I used to be a cheap SOB). It came back with about a 100 grit finish. I did a lot of buffing. http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid29/p3a040bfe247ab8cd5ba890bd7f20eed7/fd61462e.jpg