Greetings everyone. I'm a newbie so please bear with me on this question. I was going through the maintenance regiment on my Sierra when I got to a point where it said the daily cleaning routine wasn't necessary if you had your banjo chrome plated. Anyone have any idea where I could take my banjo to have this done, and whether or not it's a good idea? Thanks in advance!
Adam... Don't know how close you live to a large city, but hopefully you will be able to find a "plater" or "electro-plater" near by. Check your Yellow Pages or Google "platers in [your city]". According to the finish you now have, re-plating typically requires stripping the existing plating, coating, or finish from the part before building up the new finish, and this sometimes requires buffing and polishing (which, if done poorly, can round edges and cause recesses near holes such as where the bracket hooks go).
Chrome plating is a two-step process in which the part is first copper-plated, and then chrome is applied immediately after. (Nickel plating is actually done over chrome plating, so for a nickel plated finish the process is copper>chrome>nickel.) If your parts are now nickel plated, there are some platers who can strip the nickel, but the resulting chrome underneath will either need buffing, or may yield a poor finish depending on how the nickel was stripped. Any good plater you connect with can guide you.
Good luck...
Roger
Your Deering Sierra would be nickel plated.
Cleaning your banjo everyday is not necessary either way though, just my opinion. Clean it when its dirty if you want, i dont even do that, but theres no reason to clean it EVERY day. That would be taxing. Its not a museum piece
Nickel does tarnish a little easier than chrome, but it looks nicer i think and i cant imagine it would be worth the trouble. As long as you dont live in a swamp the plating will be fine for a long time
Thank you both for your input! I thought my Sierra was nickel plated but I'm having a hard time keeping the rest clean. Everything stays nice and clean except the rest. I guess I'll have to try something different with cleaning that one piece. I know it looks like it gets played a lot, which it does, but I'd like it to stay looking as closed to brand new as possible.
Try Nevr-Dull to clean the parts you're having problems with. You pull a little cotton wadding out of the can and rub the parts and they come clean. I've been using it on metal instrument parts for years. It's available at most home stores like Home Depot or Lowes. I have no financial interest in the product by the way.
http://www.nevrdull.com/
Mike, got some Nevr-Dull and it did an amazing job. There's a tiny little bit it didn't get off. Maybe it sat on there too long. In any case it looks waaaaaaaaay better. Thank you!Originally Posted by MikeEdgerton
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