Here's my thoughts on coating over chrome. We all know that having a blasted surface is going to give the powder a better "tooth" to attach to for a longer lasting durability. But I've never had anyone put a number on it. If a blasted surface is best at , let's say, 100 then what is a polished surface at, 90, 75, 50, 25? Will the polished surface powder coating flake off tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or maybe never? Common sense should be used in your judgement on what should be coated or not. I would not coat a chrome piece that is subject to rocks, gravel, etc. thrown at it all day. Handlebars, head lights, etc.- parts that never get touched or abused at all may last forever with coating over plating. As I mentioned before, I can only go by my experience which has been successful with no returns so far. Go to any powder supplier and look at the candy colors and read the fine print that says "For best results use over polished chrome plating, stainless steel or aluminum." I absolutely hate when someone says "You can't do that." but can't or won't explain why it can't be done. I started out with an Eastwood Hotcoat hobby gun. Bottom of the line , cheap powder system for the beginner hobbiest. It does well on small parts for the DIY kind of guy. I started a little niche hobby of candy coating lug nits. With each set of nuts I coated came delivered to you in a small "Crown Royal" type cloth bag. I called that line the "Nut Sack":
I was learning and someone said "You can only coat things that are metal", Really? why? Some one asked if you can coat rocks? I gave it a try knowing what I knew about the coating process and did this,
Rock Candy:
I had a customer want a camo valve cover and called Eastwood and Caswell to see if their guns could do 4 layers. Both said probably not. I got both of them to donate powder for the project to see. I was able to accomplish the task and both companies were impressed with the results:
My point here is don't always believe what you are told. So much of what I learned in high school in history and such I am now finding to have all been completely wrong. I have accomplished a lot of things in my life merely because someone told "It can"t be done", Our World Land Speed Record at Bonneville is another example of many people telling us what we were doing was impossible. We left a lot of rich engineers scratching their heads when we left B'ville in 2011 with a record after a 2-1/2 month frame up build from scratch car.
