Gold plating chrome without stripping

Gold plating chrome without stripping with our Gold Strike

Our plating solutions Gold Strike and Gold Strike Xtra allow you to gold plate straight on to chrome without having to first strip it off. It also deposits a very adhesive layer, which means you can subsequently plate thick layers of gold using our Gold Brush Plating Solution or our Gold Tank Plating Solution.
Gold Strike and Gold Strike Xtra are also good for plating on to harder to plate stainless steel alloys, which includes items such as yacht fittings, dental fixtures and kitchen implements.
The 'Xtra' refers to an extra 2 grams of gold which means Gold Strike Xtra plates at the same rate but has more than twice the coverage of Gold Strike. The demonstration below uses Gold Strike but all of the instructions will be the same for Gold Strike Xtra.
Below is a short project which demonstrates gold plating a chrome plated lighter.

Please note: The Rectifier shown in this project has now been discontinued and replaced by the MF Rectifier Mk II.

Preparing the surface with MPU

To prepare the surface of the chrome, rub with our MPU and a soft tissue and rinse off.

Gold plating over the layer of chrome - 3 - 4 volts

Set your MF Rectifier Mk II to brush plate mode and set the voltage to between 3 to 4 volts and fit a Carbon Electrode to your Electrode Handle.

If you are using one of our MF Rectifiers, please click HERE for instructions for setting it up for brush plating.

Slip on one of our S-Type Mini Swabs on to the electrode. Dip the pre-wetted swab into a small amount of the Gold Strike and start plating with regular circular strokes. You will quickly see the gold being deposited on to the surface of the chrome. Once you have covered the surface of your work so that the underlying metal completely disappears, you have built up a suitably thick key layer for subsequent plating with our other gold solutions. We recommend plating to a thickness of about 0.1 microns with our Gold Strike to create a key layer.

The sellotape test

The sellotape test demonstrates just how adherent a layer Gold Strike deposits. The selloptape was firmly stuck the the Gold Strike surface and then firmly and quickly removed. All the gold stayed plated to the surface of the work and there wasn’t a trace of gold left on the sellotape.

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