Casewell VS real cad plating

[Bill W.]

Does anyone have any Ideas on which is better, To use the Copy cad system and plate my own bolts and parts . Or to send everything out for platting . In the past I have used a professional platter , and been very happy with the pros. work. I am interested in quailty ,price ,& time .I have a couple of platers about 25 miles from home . Copy cad users I would like your input on what to buy ,how much,and what I dont need . Thanks.....Bill

[Gary S.]

Re: Casewell VS real cad plating

I bought a Caswell plating kit a year ago and love it. It will do various types of plating if you buy the chemicals they sell. Caswell calls their cad system "copy cad" which is really zinc. I have used mine a lot this past year restoring my 67 coupe. There is a learning curve and after some failures, I had to get some pointers from a couple experienced users one being Jerry Funicillo who is really an expert. If you don't prep the parts right, it won't work (degrease and acid etch for starters). Caswell is not fast but useful and very satisfying once you catch on. But it is hard to do large parts like brake dust shields. It is wonderful for nuts, bolts and such. The great thing is you can do those parts that are valuable or small or fragile you would not really want to give to a mass plater. Also great for doing those things you forgot to send to a plater. And, you can redo parts over and over until you are satisfied. But for the most part, sending out is quicker and probably better quality overall. Real cad is hard to get done or expensive to have done. Since the judging manuals say "cad or zinc" are acceptable in most cases (C2's), I typically have a batch done in bright zinc by a local electro-plating operation and then shoot it lightly with glass beads to make it look like cad. Some 0000 steel wool helps with the Caswell kit and also with the light glass beading on the bright zinc. Hope this helps.

Parts I plated using Caswell
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Caswell good for fragile and small parts that can get damaged or lost at a mass plater like this capacitor and those small blower screws shown here I did with my Caswell.
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