Brushed finish on oem steering wheels, how is it done?

[Ghoste]

Reading about the reproduction woodgrain wheels for the second gen cars got me to wondering, how did they make the brushed finish on the original ones?

[471_Magnum]

There are a couple of different ways to do it.

The base metal itself can be brushed before the chrome process, but it must be grained pretty heavily so as not to wash out during plating.

Or

After the nickel layer in the plating process, the part is brushed. The part is then returned to the plating process where the final chrome layer is applied.

Not sure which way the wheel were done, or even what type of plating is used on the wheels. To be honest, I never looked that close. It is a pretty fine grain though, so I'd presume the nickel layer is brushed.

[Ghoste]

So if they really wanted to, the repro ones could have been done with the brushed finish it was probably a simple a cost cutting measure to not do them that way?

[tan top]

thats the only thing wrong  with the repops  ... spokes the wrong finish , there was mention of wet flatting them, perhaps wipe them with metal ready or something to make it dull then wet flat 

[plumbeeper]

Reading about the reproduction woodgrain wheels for the second gen cars got me to wondering, how did they make the brushed finish on the original ones?

The original finish was a very simple chrome plating that is rarely used today. First the steel spokes were stamped, then trimmed, sanded, or whatever to prepare for plating. Then came the copper/ dull (dirty) nickel/ chrome plating in that order. Most of what you see anywhere nowadays is the bright nickel then chrome. The new reproduction wheels by PG Classics or BEA were done with Stainless Steel which is why they don't have quite the same appearance. Brushing them down with some very fine sandpaper or maybe a very fine blast will help in dulling the SS. The original can be replated like they were back then, but getting them to have that consistant satin sheen as well as the details at the ends of the spokes has always been a problem.

Hope that helps.

Dave

[tan top]

thats intersting  infomation ..thanks for sharing Dave 

[plumbeeper]

That's what I'm here for. When you've handled as many wheels as I have, you tend to learn a little about them.

Dave

[471_Magnum]

Sounds like they weren't really brushed at all then. Like I said, I never looked that close.

There is a satin chrome process out there that is becoming more common in mass production. In my previous life, we did it all the time. It involved contaminating the nickel layer to reduce the DOI (depth of image). There were a couple of different finishes we did for the OEMs. This was on plastic, but there is no reason it could not be done on metal. Takes a ton of development to get it right.

I'm not aware of any low volume custom plater doing it, and I can understand why they wouldn't mess with it. The satin chrome bath has a very limited life and to get your money's worth, you'd have to run it in fairly large batches.