Kits in Chrome and gunmetal

[ldb2000]

Knowing the source of our kits , I would tend to agree with you Ed and since 14k has almost the same look and wear characteristics as 24k I wouldn't put anything past them . What I know about gold plating came from the jewelry industry and they have very strict standards when it comes to plating .

 

[Smitty37]

true enough

Knowing the source of our kits , I would tend to agree with you Ed and since 14k has almost the same look and wear characteristics as 24k I wouldn't put anything past them . What I know about gold plating came from the jewelry industry and they have very strict standards when it comes to plating .

I'm far from expert on this but the reading I have been doing certainly implies that the standards for jewelry are much tighter than we see. I have not read anywhere yet where that the FTC standards apply outside the jewelry industry. What I have read seems to say the jewelry must be marked with the karatage and I know the inside of my wedding band is so marked, it plainly says 10Kt.

On the other side of the coin, what I've read also seems to imply that the savings by using a lower karatage would be very small since the handling and process would be the same and the only savings would be in the gold solution and it is relatively easy to test what the karatage is, it would seem some of the bigger houses could well afford to do that as a quality control measure. There are kits (intended for jewelers who buy gold) available for a fairly low cost designed for that purpose. So it would be fairly easy to catch "cheaters" if you wanted to.

Another interesting tid bit that I ran into regards rack plating vs tumble plating...what I read didn't come out cut and dried that rack is the best choice for getting uniform plating on small items, most of the articles I read said rack was better suited for larger objects and listed difficulty in getting uniform plating as one of the problems with it. All agreed that it is more costly but none implied that it is always a better choice than tumble.

 

[ldb2000]

The main problem is there is no standard in this country for "Decorative Plating" , there are plenty for jewelry . The difference between a 14k pen kit and a 24k pen kit is very small but there is a difference , especially now that Gold is over $1200 an ounce . 1 gram of Gold will plate aprox 160 square inches to a thickness of 20 micro inches . Lets say in round numbers that a slimline kit requires .5 square inch of Gold plate (that number is most likely smaller then reality) to cover all components to a thickness of 20 micro inches , crunch the numbers , that works out to about 9000 kits per ounce of Gold . When figured in those numbers you can clearly see that every gram of Gold saved adds up fast . So now you either use a thinner plating or you cut the gold with another cheaper metal like silver/copper and there is a very real savings . I'm not knocking China but we know their QC standards are not ideal so if they can either use a thinner plate or an alloy and get away with it they will .
People always wonder why Mont Blanc charges so much for their pens this is one reason , they use jewelry grade platings to insure a lasting quality which means they use at least a 2 micron (80 micro inch) plate and can guaranty their pens will last .

 

[ed4copies]

Smitty,

Tumble requires far less labor and so, is cheaper.

However, if pieces "stick together" (and I have centerbands that will confirm this happens), they don't get plated at all. Not the end of the world, but not pretty, either.

I am truly interested in learning what I can about the process of making pen parts. Semantics be damned---24kt doesn't have to mean all gold for our purpose---it would be NICE if they were honest, but, well I've gotten used to not expecting that much.

All we care about, as pen guys, is the durability and the "pretty". BUT, how do we know what we are buying???

THAT is the point I am trying to get to---in my OWN business, not industry-wide.

They want to lie, I really don't care, just that I don't want to lie, repeating THEIR B.S.

 

[Smitty37]

No debate

I'm sorry....yes everything I have read did indicate that tumbling is much less labor intensive and less costly. What was interesting to me was that I didn't see anywhere that said absolutely that rack plating was best in all cases. I would have thought if rack is more expensive that the only reason to use it would be if you got a better plating job to justify a higher price....but then if you are going to use hardened gold you also have the followup plating and that may work better in rack.

 

[ed4copies]

All the glass panels we had plated were rack plated.

I got the impression, size matters here, Smitty. To get a uniform gold plating (over the nickle, over the copper), they needed to attach electrical contacts, sometimes at critical junctions of the piece. With small (2-5") pieces it was pretty straightforward. The bigger panels and the 3d boats caused some heartburn!!

 

[Smitty37]

I understand

Ed. That sounds like maybe rack works better for small pieces even though the sources I read implied it was more for larger pieces. But, when i think about it that could easily be because 1000 small pieces will be a lot more work to rack than a couple of dozen bigger ones.

Butch. I agree they could save about 4 to 8 cents based on .5 to 1.0 sq. inch of plating. That could be significent over a few million kits.

Thinking about that though raised another question in my mind. The Polaris and Gatsby (using PSI catalog) are priced close with Gatsby being about 50 cents higher but...looking at them, the Polaris obviously has much more gold plate than the Gatsby just looking and not performing the calculus for surface area it looks to me like at least double and maybe three times as much area to plate.

One other thing....related....It looks to me like PSI has phased out Chrome in some of their product styles, sometimes in favor of brushed satin and sometimes in favor of rhodium. The brushed satin is near the same price as chrome but the rhodium is much higher. I am not sure but I seem to see those platings in some kits that used to have chrome. Polaris being one of them.

 

[Smitty37]

Durability

From my experiences The best four plating in order are

Rhodium/Platinum
Black Titanium
Gold Titanium
Chrome

Everything else is below those and I don't buy them any longer.

Rhodium/Platinum does not belong with the other 3 in durability. Rhodium is softer metal than Chrome and Platinum alone is not much harder than silver or copper. Platinum alloy's can get to about the same as Rhodium.

Black Chrome will also give excellent wear and a lot lower cost than Black TN, Gold TN and Chrome will give excellent wear.

Gun Metal is a Tin/Bronze alloy and is not especially hard.

 

[Smitty37]

I get complaints

At the same time "no complaints" doesn't mean its not happening, just that the customer is getting what they expect.

My customers don't hesitate to complain about anything else they find wrong so I suspect they would let me know if they were having problems. I did some research and gun metal is a rather soft plating it is a tin/bronze alloy not at all in the class of chrome, tn gold or black tn. I think that by some vendors it is clear sealed with epoxy which should help it stand up for awhile under normal use.