The copper layer in a chrome palting process has a couple of functions. 1.
Copper tends to fill in irregularities. 2. copper is easy to polish. Once
the steel is reasonable smooth, plating with copper fills in spots and the
piece can be polished down to the steel again, leaving the dips filled.
Re-copper palting gives a surface that is easly to polish. Any plating is
only as smooth as the surface it is plated onto. Therefore, highly ploished
copper yileds a polished nickel surface which gives a polished chrome
surface. During a tour of a chrome plating shop, our car club was told that
the chorme is very thin and that what one sees as shiny chrome is really the
nicket under the chrome. They told us that the chrome simply protects the
nickel from Oxygen which would turn the nicket gray as it oxydized.
Ron
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