Look up electroplaters in a...
Look up electroplaters in a business directory for your area and you should find someone offering chrome plating - its got more expensive recently (China's buying up all the nickel & chromium)- at UK rates I'd expect to pay about £70 ($140) to get that done. Chrome plating works are a real treat to visit though!
.
Try and get a recommendation for a decent chrome shop. Theres a lot of poor quality stuff out there. A good shop should have examples of things that they have completed.
Your chair will have to be re-finished so that the surface is well prepared for the chroming process. Sometimes this is more costly than the electroplating itself.
The chrome can only be as good as the achieved finish on the bare metal underneath.
The caveat being that...
The caveat being that sometimes you can have a too good finish! I occasionally use a place (London Chroming) whose speciality is automotive chrome to concourse standard - their work is quite beautiful but rather more perfect than a mass produced chair frame would have originally enjoyed....
From the picture...
...it is obvious that there is some corrosion beyond the flaking chrome, so yes, to strip the existing plating and prepare it for re-plating is going to be the expensive part.
Plating including chrome plating has been a very polluting industry. Only recently a combination of technology and legislation has made it more acceptable, so, depending on where you are do not choose the cheapest one because they might not use very environmental friendly methods.
Paulanna is right on in pointing out that car body platers offer a quality of plating that is not suitable for furniture. The process is not different it is a matter of thickness of the chrome layer (indoor products do not need the protection that car parts require)
Ask your chrome plater to explain the different stages of the stripping and plating. If they do mention nickel plating in the preparation for the chrome plating, look for someone else.
Good luck!
Finding a plater can be iffy
I'm in Minneapolis, and it's not as easy to find platers. Many of the commercial platers are not interested in taking on individual work. They don't highly polish the end product. They don't want to be bothered.
One option is to contact one of the better auto repair businesses...one that works on classic cars. They would know who does good prep, nickel-plating, chroma-plating, and knows how to highly polish the end product.
That would assume, of course, that the plater they suggest will consider taking your work.
I have a LaFonda table case that's a mess, and i cannot find a plater here in town. (Of course, I don't have the blankity-blank table top....I'd love to find a slate or marble top that's ready to screw in....)
barry
have a LaFonda table case that's a mess,
take the base to a marble store and they can cut and polish you a oval piece of marble depends if you want the large or the small I have done that on several nice pieces and they turned out great
look to spend anywhere from 150 to 450 for the marble, but it will be worth it as they can either drill the holes from the base to the marble or get a round piece of wood, mine was done that way and then affixed to the bottom of the marble and set in the wood
worked perfect, as far as polishing or replateing them
i have had nothing but trouble finding people to plate things ,
that is why i always have things powder coated
and it looks just as good,
i have no idea what the deal was with crappy work on all the Lafonda bases even the table that i bought last month in Dallas that was a original LaFonda coffee table from Harding Lawrences office and cost me serious money, still had the flaking business going on, something must have happened at the miller factory when they were making all those stands, maybe the operator turned the heat up to high
Nate
Again you are dealing with a problem that will more than likely eat up any monetary value the chair has by having it rechromed. These chairs, while not exactly common, are by no means rare. That doesn't mean that your find isnt special. It just is a matter of how much you are willing to invest in the repair/restoration of it. I'm a big fan of doing as much possible - within reason. If you want to restore the chair to 'like new' you might as well buy a new chair. You can also acknowledge the chairs history and accept some of the dings and flaws it has accquired in its life, something the Japanese call WabiSabi (wabi=inherent irregular quality + sabi=patina of age). This doesnt mean you have to leave the chair in disrepair, you simply fix it up as much as you can and dont try to hide the fact that it was damaged.
Some options for the backrest have been discussed in your previous posting. For the chrome - since it is flaking off you have the obviously expensive option of rechroming. You could also leave the flaking as-is, or a less expensive option: sandblast and powdercoat the frame black.
Agreed and Thank You
Yeah I agree. I'd rather own a roughed up old Eames chair than a new one because there's no story in a new one. Plus, I can't justify the expense. I'm actually fine with the way the base is as long as I can stop it from continuing to flake off chrome. The wood is another story. (And I'm adding new pictures to my other DCM post of some surprises once I removed the backrest!)
So thank you all for helping brainstorm some options.
If you need any help, please contact us at – info@designaddict.com