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Re: Silver plating keys?

Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-02-08 16:36

What Dibbs said.

Silver is by far my most favourite metal - nice look, excellent grip, can be replated easily, etc... - the downside is it tarnishes easily and the sulphur content of ebonite mouthpieces, case materials, leather tanning/curing agents and other things can cause silver plate to turn black. But it can be polished back up to a bright by hand without too much grief (but plenty of elbow grease).

While gold plate has many advantages over silver if you have body chemistry that doesn't agree with it, it isn't applied anywhere nearly as thickly as silver which on pro level instruments can be a minimum of 25 microns - maybe up to around 40 microns if you were to take the measurements.

Copper flash shouldn't be applied too thickly as copper has a very rough finish at a microscopic level - much better is to have a nickel flash as nickel plate is incredibly smooth. Consider how slippery nickel plate is under the fingers in comparison to copper and you'll understand. But with nickel being a very hard metal and tough on cutting tools, it should only be applied up to around 5 microns at most, then silver plate on top of that.

But most companies are plating directly onto copper due to its conductivity, but if the preparation is poor no matter if it's copper or nickel under the silver plate, the finish won't be good and the plating can peel off if it hasn't adhered well.

I've yet to see platinum plate or platinum, but I hear it's like silver - and then some. But it's prohibitively expensive.

Some plating companies add an anti-tarnish layer to silver plate which is probably a company secret, but if they do offer that, then I think it's wise to have it done. Good plating companies will inspect every key they plate and then do the extra work to tweak any that have imperfections from the plating process.

But doing all the necessary prep work on keys before sending them to be plated will be beneficial - remove any dents, dinks, tarnish, grease, old shellac, scratches and do all the soldering and cleaning up work before plating, then all that's left to do is refitting the keys when you get them back after they've been plated as they won't fit if they've had 25+ microns of silver, plus the undercoats plated onto them. So all rod and point screws will need to be fitted as will all screw threads. Don't overbroach anything and expect the plating to take up the slop as plating doesn't go on evenly inside key barrels and if you've shortened key barrels by fraising them back, they may still be loose between pillars after being plated and swaging them to get them to fit will only mar the finish and you may need to have them replated again.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

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