Dan wrote:
"Everyone seems to recommend being as anal as possible in
cataloguing the parts as they come off. If you end up taking all your
hardware to a plater at the end, much of that effort seems wasted. Why not
just throw the nuts and bolts into a five gallon bucket as you go?"
The only advantage is if you note the sizes descriptions and locations of the
hardware either as it comes off, or later if you hand clean it, You can then
more easily retrieve the right bolt-washer-lockwasher combinations when you
put it back together. (Presuming it was anywhere near right before you took it
apart). I found this particularly useful with the plain washers, since there
are so many that were interchangeable, with the same ID but different
thicknesses and ODs.
The plater (white Cadmium) I used could clean the hardware with chemicals,
which removed corrosion, but did not like grease, undercoat or paint. -It also
left a somewhat rough finish.
There are a couple of advantages to hand cleaning all that stuff. -I wanted to
repair the threads with a tap and die prior to plating, rather than strip the
plating off trying to refit balky threads. Wire wheeling gives a better finish
for plating, and removed all the stuff that the chemicals would not (and which
the plater didn't want in his tank). It gave me a chance to inspect each bit,
and replace damaged / incorrect screws, bolts etc before plating. (Stripped or
damaged heads, SAEs, bent screws/bolts, mashed threads, bent/ cupped washers)
I could have replaced these during reassembly, but then the plating would not
match. It also allows you to check the count on things like interior panel
posidrive screws. If you are going to handle all that stuff anyway, then
taking notes isn't a big deal. This process was also good for small painted
parts which would suffer from sand blasting. The disadvantages are MAJOR. It
is an almost inconceivable PAIN..... -And I went through a bunch of wire
wheels that winter, and spent a lot of time picking wires out of my hair,
face, clothes, cat, etc. -Not to mention the clutch return spring that snagged
in the wheel and hit me in the upper lip at about 150 mph! --Ah, the things we
do for art!!
BTW, I white cad plated all of the ZINC parts, which was a little more
expensive, but looks the same, and is supposed to be more forgiving (less
likely to crack) during reassembly. Cad platers are hard to find around here
as the waste water has arsenic in it and there are expensive disposal
considerations.
--A lot of this is moot, unless you are a sick, "anal", obsessive
compulsive... or a concours guy!
David W. Jones
'62 Mk II BT7 tricarb
Cumberland, RI USA
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