With several cars coming apart and going back together, I have a lot of parts that need refinishing. There is no one stop shopping for plating, so when I called my usual black oxide guy, he unfortunately told me he wasn’t doing black oxide anymore! Finding a new “guy” to do this can be a struggle, especially when it comes to small batches for a Ferrari. Industrial platers run huge lots of parts through their finishing, and small batches are rarely worth their time. Two things happen, either they lose your parts, or they don’t come out very nicely because they don’t really care about the small batch. If they do a good job, they usually cost too much! I’ve been thinking about trying a “cold” black oxide process, and now I found my hand being forced into a new process!

My first step was to get a vibratory tumbler to help the process of cleaning the rusty old hardware. I’ve been meaning to get one of these units to save me some time in front of a bench top wire wheel and now was as good of a time as ever.

After a couple of attempts, I got the process down that seemed to net good results. Let’s see how well this finish holds up compared to the industrial hot black oxide plating processes I used to use.