Refinishing Nickel Plated Revolvers

A

arquebus357

New member
Most gun shops in my area have a number of older nickel plated revolvers at the dimly lit, bottom shelf of their display cases. Many are pretty good examples of quality pieces from top tier makers. The nickel plating is in poor shape making them pretty ugly but cheap examples of used firearms.

My question is, can the plating be removed and the revolver re-blued ? I know that Brownell's sells a nickel plating remover and I assume that it works. Is there a resulting dimension problem after the plating is removed ?

I realize that the result would have no collector's value but this site is not touted as a "collector"s" site the way Gunboards is. I just enjoy bringing guns, that are down on their luck, back from the brink.

Thanks for any input.
 
The plating can be removed by a plating shop and the firearm can be replated, blued, Cerakoted, or whatever finish you want to apply.
 
The plating can be removed. If refinishing with anything other than nickel, you must make sure ALL the old nickel is stripped away.
If you like tinkering, get an electroless nickel plating kit from Caswellplating.com, and some nickel stripper also.

You will need to do some polishing to match the finish where the old nickel was damaged.
 
Thanks for the information.

I'm formerly from Chicago. Back in the old days getting work done by plating shops in that area was not such a big deal and fairly inexpensive. For example, $35 to get a 39 Ford bumper re-plated. I'm talking about the copper based chrome procedure. Today it's like brain surgery with potted plants in the service desk area.

What I would be doing is to blue the stripped piece. I will look into reverse electro plating. I hadn't thought of that. I would avoid the numerous examples that have deep rust replacing the plating.

Yes, I tinker

 
I remember the good old days when the leaflet in the Smith & Wesson box showed a shop service for "Change of finish." Want your nickel gun blued or your blue gun plated? Send it in.
 
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