Polishing Gold Plated Parts

[LukeR]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering- what is the best way to polish gold plated hardware? Way back, I used to use furniture polish to remove smudge marks from my goldplated Pafs and tunomatic- After a year or so, I had rubbed through the plating in several areas. THe furniture polish seemed to make the plating a bit 'bubly' (like it needed a sand down)- evenually the parts of the hardware where the gold had been removed developed a greenish tinge.

What is the best way to remove smudges and polish gold parts without removing the finish?

Thanks guys,

Luke

[doug]

that's the problem with gold kinda sorta. i use dunlop guitar polish. never furniture polish because of the silicone content. stewmac has preservation polish that is also great stuff without silicone.

are you going to replace the parts and try not to "ruin" the finish going forward? what you have now has already been compromised. I found that careful use of chrome polish works wonders.

hope that helps.

-doug

[LukeR]

Hi Doug!

thanks for the tips I am not really worried about the old guitar; its just that I want my project to have gold hardware (and I dont want to make the same mistakes again:) )

Thanks again man,

Luke

[Drak]

You're kinda screwed really.

The 3 basic rules are:

Clean gold plated parts as little as you can

Use nothing but soapy water and a little elbow grease to buff

Where possible, clear coat your gold parts with clear lacquer using an airbrush, and a coat so thin you can't barely even tell it's there.

The lacquer trick only works on -some- parts, (you could do it to a stop-tailpiece, but not a tom bridge for example) but where you can get away with it, it's great. They'll never tarnish, always look brand new, and never need anything more than water and a rag to clean.

But you have to use a good airbrush and a good touch so no one will ever know it's on there, but the gold will always look brand new, it'll never age or wear at all as long as you have that thin coat of lacquer on it.

At least not for a long long time.

[Dugz Ink]

There are a lot of things out there that qualify as "gold plating" even though they aren't "pure" gold. I did some work on some custom engine covers for a guy's motorcycle, and spent a fair amount of time on the phone with the shop that eventually did the plating for us. The guy at the plating-shop said that I should always specify "24-karat gold" for engine parts; it worked better than 14-karat (for adhesion/wear problems that he explained, but I barely understood) and it was more corrosion resistant than the various alloys that are passed off as being "gold".

Some forms of polish are actually very fine grinding compound; those will eventually "cut" right through plating... and they'll dull (round off the edges of) fine engraving. That's why a lot of people just stick to using a damp cloth for cleaning, and a soft (dry) cloth for shining precious metal.

Although gold has an extremely slow oxidation rate, it's usually plated onto metal that has a high oxidation rate. Therefore, if the gold plating has any cracks or pinholes, moisture will get in to the core metal, and the core will start oxidizing (rusting) UNDER the gold... creating that "bubbled" surface. Drak's clear-coat trick will help to keep that from happening... but once the oxidation has started, the only thing you can do is remove the plating, polish the base metal (to remove the rust) then have it re-plated.

D~s

[thedoctor]

Dugz has hit on the real problem with thin gold-plate. It is actually porous(tho it shouldn't be) and the damage that results in lost plating comes from beneath. The thin laquer WILL seal the porosity but it also wears off. I rely on liberal waxing(carnuba?) and cleaning with an old, clean flannell shirt. Still have a well-worn late 50's Gibson with the factory gold intact so it is working for me.

[LukeR]

Thanks everyone for the discussion! Its truely appreciated.

Following all the above advice, I hope I have better sucess

Thanks again guys!

Luke

[Devon Headen]

When I got my guitar with gold hardware, the plating was already wearing. I did avoid polishing it as much as possible for fear of wearing the rest off. Those are some really good ideas (especially the lacquer), and I'll have to remember them if I use gold hardware in future projects.