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Well...I know some may find me a bit odd...strange..or just plain stupid, but I decided to buy a Do It Yourself Gold Plating kit...and ...

[img][img]http://img93.echo.cx/img93/3026/img03070ee.jpg[/img][/img]



and of course....I had this idea while.......ummmm....drinking some water

[img][img]http://img93.echo.cx/img93/5968/img03123sv.jpg[/img][/img]

Jason,

Looks great! We will all be interested to see how long the plating lasts - and then consider doing some ourselves!

BEEOOOTIFUL I especially like the bottle cap finger buttons

Did you use one of the kits marketed for automotive spot-plating? Did you gold plate right over the existing silver plate?

I used to market a line of sterling silver and gold Corvette jewelery and also did some vermeil (gold over silver). The gold part of the process is fairly easy as long as you have a good base. I suppose gold could be flashed over silver but as I recall, I used a strike coat of copper followed by nickel... and then gold.... even when using sterling silver as a base metal. The tricky part was the nickel. If you burned the nickel it was very tough to get off in order to start over.

Heeeeeey- Anybody can see that those finger buttons have dents in them!

windshieldbug wrote:Heeeeeey- Anybody can see that those finger buttons have dents in them!

One of 'em is a 'twist-off'

I though real tuba players just broke off the necks of the bottles on the side of the table to open 'em!

Man, you will be stylin' w/ that axe! I might have to chosen to go with all microbrew bottlecaps though

Well....I experiemented a little with the process and decided my best results were just plating over the exisitng silver. I buffed it with some jewlers rough.....and then made sure everything was very very clean. Then just followed the directions for plating. All in all it took me about 4 hours to polish/clean /plate everything.

Dan...I used one of the Caswell systems....they work great and are very affordable. I am a little curious to see how it lasts.... only time will tell.

tuba4sissies wrote:Why not put the gold plating off for a bit and purchase yourself a bed?

AFTER YOU PURCHASE A BED, how about gold plating a mouthpiece?

I believe he already has a nice bed and bedroom suite. If you look carefully, you'll also see that the room is carpeted. What you apparently interpreted as floor is actually an attractive headboard. All goes to show you that we see what we want to see.

Hahahaha well...I have a nice bed thank you, with a very nice mattress (I am done with that subject )

I did the rim of my mouthpieces actually..... pics are right here
[img][img]http://img149.echo.cx/img149/8577/img03595oy.jpg[/img][/img]

and another mouthpiece i have done
[img][img]http://img149.echo.cx/img149/3063/img03630kh.jpg[/img][/img]