Providence Journal

Home of the Chrome is in Fall River

5:20 PM EDT on Friday, April 13, 2007

By Peter C. T. Elsworth, Journal Staff Writer

FALL RIVER - Jack Baker is a busy man.

Baker is sales manager at Nu-Chrome Restoration in Fall River, which specializes in restoring chrome plating, mostly for old cars, but also for boats and motorcycles.

"I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger," he said at the start of a 1 1/2 hour tour of the factory, during which his cell phone logged 24 calls. He said he is busier than usual at this time of year because it's the start of the summer driving season.

Baker is also busy because he and his team of craftsmen make silk purses out of sows' ears. While most of the old chrome parts arrive in okay condition — dull and tired looking — some are rusted and rotted through or pitted or dented or bent, seemingly to the point of no return. But there is no such thing as "no return" here.

"Nothing is beyond repair," he said. "If you've got the time and money, we have the talent."

Pieces that are dented are hammered back into shape. Pieces that are pitted are filled in. Pieces that are bent are straightened. Pieces that are rusted through are restored to their original shapes. And then they are repeatedly ground, polished and buffed between baths to be plated with copper and then nickel. The copper provides a soft surface to shape and buff while the nickel is both anticorrosive and a commonly used base to other electroplates. By the time they are ready to be plated with a thin layer of chrome, they are perfectly restored, their coats of nickel polished and buffed to the brightness of a mirror.

"Each step takes it higher and higher until you can see yourself in it," said Baker.

A major part of Baker's job is to identify problems that might arise in the process and to set the price accordingly. A bumper, for example, might be rusted through, literally with holes in it. That would require extensive restoration work. Or pieces that are made of pot metal, or cast alloys, get pitted with time. Full restoration requires all the pits to be filled in and the finish to be as smooth as the day it came out of the factory.

"After the pieces arrive, we contact the owner and discuss what can be done, depending on the condition of the piece and the intention of the owner," he said. Some want a "custom job" so they can use the car to drive around. Others want a "show job," which involves making the piece as good as it came out of the factory. He said a show job costs about 50 percent more than a custom job.

Once the owner has decided what work he or she wants done, each piece is assigned a work order number and logged into a computer, complete with description and photograph. One showed a particular part was in "very, very rough condition."

The back of each piece, if it is big enough, is engraved with the job number to ensure that it does not get lost in the flow of parts moving through the factory.

The open area of the 40,000 square foot facility is lined with racks of parts, mostly antique bumpers, and tables on which are laid out the bits and pieces of chrome work from various vehicles; each table representing the chrome from one vehicle. Some are about to be treated, others are finished, the chrome surface gleaming. Along one long shelf are rows of bubble-wrapped bumpers ready to be shipped out.

On a couple of tables near the computer, the dull and beaten-up chrome parts of an MG-TC Midget from the late 1940s were laid out, everything from the radiator to door handles to window frames to nuts and bolts. The dents in its lights had already been hammered out. The invoice showed the owner had ordered "show" quality for the work which he wanted done by the middle of May, and had agreed to pay $7,700.

After 34 years in the business, Baker prides himself on being able to identify even the smallest piece of metal work by year, make and model. "I can tell the make and model of every bumper on the racks," he said, pointing to a rack and identifying a number of Corvette bumpers. "At any one time we have 30 or 40 Corvette bumpers here, especially from the middle years (1963 to 1967)," he said. "That's why it's important to engrave the work order numbers on each one."

"That's a '57 Thunderbird, which had a three-piece front bumper and a two-piece rear bumper," he said, gesturing to another rack. "If a customer calls and describes the year, make and model on the phone, I can picture it in my mind."

After engraving, the old chrome and anything else on the surface — nickel, copper, paint — is stripped in a chemical dip and later blasted with fine glass beads to avoid any damage. "After stripping, we can better see what condition the part is in," Baker said.

Bumpers go the straightening room to be restored to their original shape by Jose Braga. "He's been working on this for 20 years and can practically do it by eye," Baker said of Braga.

Manny Ferreira is typical of many of the craftsmen at the plant, taking old pieces that have been rusted through and literally reconstructing them with "hammer, anvil and torch," Baker said, noting Ferreira was replacing a piece from a Cadillac bumper that had been incorrectly restored. "It takes a lot of talent," he said. "The original was pretty rough, so (it goes) through a lot of steps, a lot of hard work."

Emmanuel Ferreira was filling in the pits on a piece of cast metal with solder. After grinding and polishing, the pieces are plated with copper and further worked on to slowly bring them to perfection. "They call it reconstruction," Baker said. "I call it bringing them back from the dead." Grinding and polishing continues until all the reconstruction work and blemishes are smoothed out, the copper providing a soft surface to mold and polish. Once smooth, the copper-plated piece is ready to be plated with nickel.

Electroplating involves dipping a negatively charged item into a liquid medium that contains a metal in either metallic or chemical form. The ions from the metal carry a positive charge and are attracted to the item, where the negative charge reduces them back to the metal in the form of a thin coating.

A top quality chrome finish is preceded by layers of copper and nickel. At Nu-Chrome, the copper- and nickel-plating tanks use chunks of raw metal as the anode while the chrome-plating tanks uses a solution of tri-chrome sulfate.

Once the pieces have been nickel plated, they are polished. Larger pieces, most notably bumpers, are polished on large, free-standing machines with wheels that have been treated with pumice. Polishing bumpers requires both strength and a deft touch. "Those machines don't stop," said Baker eyeing the spinning wheels, adding, "You don't want to catch the piece the wrong way."

"You don't want arm-wrestle him," referring to Hector Mateo who, along with Domingas Torres, was man-handling bumpers through the polishing process. The finished bumpers glowed.

"We try to bring parts to mirror finish before plating," he said, adding that pieces are nickel plated, buffed and nickel plated again.

Indeed, the distinctive shine of chrome is actually a reflection of the highly polished nickel below it. The nickel also provides smoothness and resistance to corrosion. The very thin layer of chrome — items are only dipped for a few minutes, compared with well over an hour for both copper and nickel — creates the bluish finish while protecting the nickel from tarnish.

"A lot of people think we have a big vat of shiny liquid." Baker said. "As you can see, there's a lot more to it than that."

Indeed, the few short minutes the pieces spend in the chrome bath is something of an anticlimax after weeks of prep work. And perhaps just as well. Chromium — the official name of the element — is toxic and the factory is highly regulated. "Nothing leaves the building," he said. "It's zero discharge. Everything is taken away by hazardous waste (companies)."

In addition, employees are periodically checked for levels of chromium in their blood. At the same time, Baker noted that the trivalent chrome sulfate used in the chrome plating is far less toxic than the hexavalent chrome sulfate that was traditionally used.

Back in the open area, Baker surveyed a number of finished products that were waiting to be wrapped for shipping.

"That's a '71 (Buick) Skylark," he said pointing to a bumper with double exhaust vents. "Very rare."

"And I can't believe how this came out," he said, picking up and admiring the winged hood ornament from a 1950 Chrysler Windsor.

"This is a dusty place to work, but it's great fun," he said.