Any way to salvage a tool with flaking chrome?

[Packard V8]

Randomly, I'll find one old tool with rust spots which shines up fine. The next one, try to remove the rust spots and the chrome is flaking off and leaving burrs which could literally cut a user's hands.

The latest is a semi-pebble Proto Los Angeles 7/8 combination wrench. I just pick up Plomb and Proto LA because I know many of you collect, but not sure I'd be doing anyone a favor passing along a workplace injury waiting to happen.

Is there any fix?

jack vines

 

[gte718p]

Lots of fixes, but no good ones.
The ideal solution would be take all the chrome off and replate it. That u fortunately is stupid expensive.
You can sand the pits down so it is smooth and polish the base metal. It will never be perfect, but it might be serviceable. The base metal,has to be protected from rust. Finally you can sand it smooth, and paint it or blue it. Again it is serviceable as a tool but not origional.

 

[jakemac]

I wire wheel the hell out of the chipped chrome from every angle to remove the loose bits and to smooth down the sharp edges. Use a fine wire wheel. A course wheel will scratch what's left of the good chrome. After that, I do my usual buffing and oiling.

 

[tym]

I recently got a T-bar with some flaking chrome just at one end of the bar. I knocked off the loose bits with a knife, then coated with a fine layer of 5-minute epoxy. Field-expedient, but it does cover any sharp chrome edges (which can be really sharp) and reduce the likelihood that more flaking occurs.

I wouldn't do this if the chrome is loose in more than a very small area.

 

[rsanter]

Depends on what you mean by salvage?

If you want to make a usable tool that will not hurt you, l wire wheel the hell out of that spot till I can't feel a sharp edge and nothing else is peeling or flaking.

Then I use it as is

So,emtools that were really bad or not crooked and I want to prevent runt. I will have them CAD plated when I send bolts and stuff in.
I can CAD plate a 5 gal bucket or brackets and bolts for $75
I do this for the bolts on a car I am restoring and sometimes slip a tool or part off a machine in there

Bob

 

[countryroad82]

I'm not much of a collector persay, so when I've come across something I'll use but the chrome is peeling I've thrown them in the blast cabinet and blasted all of it off then painted it. I have used gun blue which turned out nice but paint is what normally happens since that's what's handy at the time.

 

[LesserSon]

Real gun blue is magnetite. Super even and thin deposits over steel can have a blue sheen, but it's really black. It usually underlays the bubbly orange hematite we recognize as rust. Every rusty piece of iron has the potential to have a beautiful gun blued surface hidden under the rust, but in practice the surface is unevenly corroded so you get pitting with pockets of rust in them. If you don't intend to polish the plain steel to a mirror finish, sanding or grinding it is a waste. Just scrape or crush rust off with a softer steel tool (stainless works for me), then oil or better, wax it.
On a plain steel tool I think this is as good a finish as you could ask for. Chrome presents problems because it is rigid and the corrosion creeps right under it, forcing new chips to flake off.

 

[woody 73]

I use a fine wire wheel and clean up the tool chrome, rust and all; then I use a few buffing compounds and bring the metal to a mirror shine and finish off with some oil on a rag along with a dab of wax on the cloth to protect against further rust.

 

[Carves]

Went through this issue again today with an old ratchet, sockets, some spanners and a coping saw.

As usual ... I let function over form, take precedence,

Wire wheel,
File and emery paper for the nastiest bits,
Then wire wheel again,
Then oil,
Chuck in box ready for use.


Ratchet is quite acceptable, got some ugly spare sockets, spanners are OK, The old coping saw went back to bare metal,

... and would probably be worth a gazillion dollars on ebay ..

 

[ZRX61]

beadblast.

 

[Dave455]

If the tool is worth re chroming, then I take it into the chromers 'as is'. They strip the old chrome off chemically, before re polishing (if necessary) and re chroming!

I'm in the U.K. and provided I don't want some 'rush job', and am prepared to chuck mine in with the nex big batch, cost is seldom an issue. But chroming is generally charged by weight, and while I've had all manner of stuff chromed, I suspect it would have to be a very valuable wrench to make re chroming a cost effective option!