Silver Anodizing

[C170U2]

How would one go about getting silver anodized hardware? Is this something you could do yourself with the right chemicals and know how? The gold anodizing doesn’t look right and is not period appropriate. This is for my other project, not the 170.

[GAHorn]

Are you referring to actual silver? Or are you meaning the COLOR of silver?

Silver color can be achieved with silver, chrome or nickel plating. However, structural items will need specialized treatment to avoid hydrogen embrittlement, basically a baking process.

What parts are you wishing to plate?

[DaveF]

You mean cadmium-plated hardware, right? It was silver-color in the 1950s but is gold now because they add chromium for extra corrosion resistance.

Google cadmium plating. There are a bunch of shops around the country that do it. Cadmium is toxic and you don't want to do it yourself.

[C170U2]

I’m just talking about the color silver. I want to remove the current gold colored hardware and have it plated so it appears silver in color. Basically anything that is visible when it’s sitting on the ramp. I’ll do some more interweb digging and see what I can find. My first attempt didn’t yield any results. Figured there might have been someone on here who wanted the same....

[gfeher]

A guy in another aircraft forum recently posted pictures of his white/silver cad plated AN hardware. It's not clear from his post whether he bought it like that or he had it white/silver cad plated. I've asked where he got it or where it can be done. I'll let you know when I receive a response.

[n2582d]

At the Newton, KS convention Tim Ryan of Vintage Aerofab had some examples of type I (silver colored) cad plating that he offers customers. It would be great if we could come up with a complete hardware list to replace all our AN hardware with correct type I cad plated hardware.

[C170U2]

Thanks! That is the exact type of lead I was looking for. I’ll put a call in tomorrow and see what he has to say. Appreciate it!

Depending on how much it costs maybe I’ll see about putting a list together for the 170 as well.

[hilltop170]

Del Lehmann at Mena had all my hardware (door hinges, tie down rings, etc) silver cad plated somewhere but I don't know where. It came out nice.