About home nickel plating (to recover wear)

[Cadillac]

In the chroming process copper is used first and plated thick enough to fill or covered all the defects in the base material then sanded and polished to a silky smooth finish, then nickel,then the chrome. Any flaw in the base metal would be seen giving you a terrible finish on the chrome. Pretty caustic processes wouldn't recommend doing in a garage without the proper setup and knowledge of doing so. Caswell plating has a lot of information on all types of coating processes and supplies.

 

[homebrewed]

Once again attaching my spreadsheet for calculating plating time for a given area and thickness. I think the web site crashed right about the time I uploaded it the first time. I DIDN'T DO IT

 

[Tim9]

FWIW...From what I’ve so far gathered, it’s very true that for decades steel was first copper coated. Copper strike and then nickel plated and then chromed. But, most effective way to do this is cyanide coatings. I’m pretty sure when using cyanide baths, you can do a copper plating n steel. But I’ve read a few articles and watched a number of videos.... and it appears that when electroplating, copper will not plate steel. One must do a nickel strike first. Then you can copper plate the nickel..".polish that copper and finally chrome.
Cyanide plating still used with commercial players but pretty hard for a diy guy to do.
Also,I’m not sure about the holding power of a nickel electroplating strike on steel/iron surfaces. Complicated stuff for sure.