Winch drum chrome

[john warren]

We are only a few weeks away from sailing to San Carlos, Mexico to put
Warren Peace away till next November. We are considering taking all
the winch drums home with us and having them rechromed. With the
exception of one electric Andersen winch, all the winches on Warren
Peace are original and various sizes made by Barient. Has anyone done
this before? Is there a difference between chroming on a car bumper
for example and chrome on a winch drum that is in the marine
environment and taking abuse by the sheets with high friction loads?

Because of shipping cost to a chroming company, I be most interested
if anyone knows of companies on the west coast that do this...but that
does not exclude companies anywhere else that might have an expertise
in this type of chroming application.

Any info? Any ideas?

Take care....from sunny LaPaz!

[John Baudendistel]

John,

 

I did a google search and found some interesting base information on the sailing forum.  May be a start.  Let the list know what you found on this project.  There is a good point on NOT chroming the underside or bearing surfaces.  Some other good points and a couple of reference places also.  Good luck. 

 

John Baudendistel

Dream Keeper

 

It's not just the rechroming that is important, the suface finish has to be perfect. If the substrate is pitted it will need copper plating with a self levelling solution and then this will inturn need polishing before nickel plating (which gives it the colour) and then chrome plating to protect it.

Just be sure they understand THAT things need to masked INSIDE as i have had shops ruin things when they plated a bearing race by mistake

 

A winch has to be hard chromed wich is a different process from decorative chroming.Only that will do!!

 

I had my Lewmar's re-chromed about 3 years ago at a shop that did custom chrome work. They have held up just fine. The only drawback I've seen is that the process made the drum pretty slippery, so the jib sheet will not hold as well as it did before. Since the winches are 30+ years old and looked like crap....I've learned to but up with the slipping problem.

 

Do you know what process they used? i.e. hard chrome vs. show chrome? The $150/winch is very reasonable I am trying to determine what it is I should ask for. If you have gotten a couple of years out of them and they still look good this is definitely on the right path!

As best I can tell, the hard chrome is a thick coating applied directly to the base metal and will have some degree of imperfections, the show chrome uses a base coat of copper which is buffed to a high polish and then a layer of nickle is applied and buffed to a high polish prior to the final layer of chromium.

I am guessing that the hard chrome (also known as "industrial chrome") which is used to build up crankshaft diameters and then milled or for hydraulic cylinders is probably what I am looking for.

Even if I had to re-chrome every few years that would be good.

If someone around there does industrial plating go to them. Be careful of the folks who do quickie chrome jobs for aftermarket cars/bikes. The stripper arms and drums on your boat will take more wear and tear than those. We found a local shop to do it. As I recall we spent about $500 to have 11 drums of various sizes and 5 stripper arms rechromed. Some were down to the bronze and others were just in the process of failing. I rebuilt the interiors and the chroming of the drums and stripper arms had us back in working order within a couple of weeks.

 

I used American Plating Services Inc, Baltimore, MD. Had 2 winches plated, also door hardware (hinges & handles). Just had them done last summer and all seems to be good. He is at the Annapolis show each year. I recall the winches being approximately $150 each.

 

I sent 4 of mine including a lot of the smaller parts like lock rings to Welcome to Paul's, the world's Premiere Restoration Replater and got excellent service and results at a fair price. One winch, now 7 years later is peeling. All others are 100%. I'm guessing a flaw in the prep caused the one to peel, but it's not too bad so I've left it alone. These guys do Harley parts, so I figured if they could serve that crowd and survive, they'd be ok to work with .

There is a lot to this than you seem to have gleaned but to start from the beginning the most typical form of chrome electro- plating is triple plating which uses copper alloy as the base coat, a variety of alloys, but usually nickle based, for the second plated coat, and a finish plated coat of Chrome. It does not matter whether you are doing an engineered chrome finish (AKA Industrial or hard coat) or decorative on bronze, bare metal chrome plating needs to be a triple plated process in that chrome does not adhere well directly to the bronze or most other metals. Looking at the wear pattern on my Lewmars they were clearly triple plated originally.

The difference between engineered chrome plating and decorative chrome plating (besides minor differences in the alloys) is that engineered chrome plating is a much thicker coating layer than decorative (thousands of an inch vs millions of an inch and occasionally decorative plating only has a nickel base plate layer). The engineered chrome has enough thickness to stand up to pressure applied to its surface. Since nickel and copper are softer metals, the sheer thinness of the decorative coat makes it seem softer and to fail more easily. A carefully prepared and plated Industrial Chrome plating should last a decade or more in use on a winch if it is usually cleaned of salt after it is used.

As noted, Lewmars have a very fine non-skid pattern, and the prep and plating fill these in a bit so there is less grip. This can be problematic on bigger boats or on a winch that has many replatings or on a boat that has been in need of rechroming for so long that the non-skid pattern has worn through. The interesting thing is that on properly loaded winches, the chrome generally does not fail on the non-skid gripping surfaces of the winch but on the smooth top of bottom flat which of course means that there should be pletty of non-skid left during the first rechroming.

I just sent off three winches for rechroming to New England Chrome Plating (New England Chrome Plating and Brass - chrome plating, brass plating, gold plating, metal finishing, industrial plating, boat restoration, motorcycle restoration, powder coating, fireplace, hard chrome plating, chrome, auto parts, antique, antique re). They are very familiar with sailing winches. The cost is about 400.00 and they will be back in about 4 weeks.

By hard chroming I think you are referring to engineering chrome which is not shiny and only applied to hardened steel. The shiny chrome is what you want for winches and what your winches originally came from the manufacturer with. It is a combination usually of first copper plating, then nickel plating and finally chrome plating. If the base metal is cleaned and prepped properly the chrome finish will not flake off, yet anything chromed in a salt water environment will eventually corrode.

 

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[John Warren]

Wow...that's a lot of info Johnny. Thanks so much.

Hugs to Laurel.

Take care....

<http://www.paulschrome.com/> and got excellent service and results at a

fair price. One winch, now 7 years later is peeling. All others are 100%.
I'm guessing a flaw in the prep caused the one to peel, but it's not too bad
so I've left it alone. These guys do Harley parts, so I figured if they
could serve that crowd and survive, they'd be ok to work with

<http://www.sailnet.com/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif> .

parts, antique, antique re <http://www.newenglandchrome.com/> ). They are

<http://passportyachts.org/>