www.tonup.com

Anybody know of good places to strip and/or apply nickel?

Hmmm, how about here?

AW Man WTF it's too early in the AM to see something like that........

Thanks Larry. I was thinking about breakfast, not anymore.

Any place that does chrome will also do Nickel.

yeah thanks for your help Larry.

I figured as much Alex, I just don't know of anybody other than Bumper Boys.

PS: I'm looking to get the Rickman re-done.

Don't mention it! I had my 441 frame nickel plated at the local chrome place, but they didn't try very hard. They kept telling me it would turn yellow (really? Why, I had no idea?) and then they didn't polish the parts before they plated so the swing arm came out all dull. Try to find a good chromer and tell him what you want. The price of nickel went up about two years ago, when I got my frame done. Don't know what the current price is, but it should be cheaper than chroming anyway.

What Rickman are you going to re-do? Bultaco?

LTR

It's a 73 ISDT British Replica. I'm not chasing Zundapp bits though. I have a Taco motor for it.

Expect the current price to be gawd awful horrid. Most of the cost is in two places. The first is the metal itself they plate with, and they usually charge by the pound. As Larry said the price of nickel (and all metals) skyrocketed a couple years back and never really came down with the economy. Copper (which I deal with a lot) more than doubled in a year, for example, and that's always the base layer. I had the tank for my Constellation chromed about 4 years ago and it was $400 bucks, Jay had his done a year or so later and it was about $700, and that was still before the real price spike. The other cost component in a GOOD plating job is in the surface prep, so things with lots of nooks an' crannies like a frame are gonna cost. Part of the higher price for Jay's tank was surface prep. It had been repaired and there were lines and transition marks that all had to be buffed out. I've found there are two kinds of plating jobs, quick an' dirty but hopefully passable, and expensive ones. Also, don't expect it to be much less, or less at all, because you are skipping the chrome. Even though its eliminating an extra step, the chrome is a microns thin flash coating mainly to seal the nickel. The costs are still all in the prep, copper base, polishing of the copper, thick nickel plate, and polishing the nickel. A good chrome job on a frame I could easily see pushing a grand these days.

Unless you are building a show bike or reproduction or some other such silly shit and you want a funny-colored frame and all I'd say powdercoat the fucker and call it good.
My tank looks absolutely beautiful and I am beyond pleased with it but I will likely never have another one plated... money and effort best spent elsewhere, methinks.

There's a whole bunch of it just 6 hourse north in Sudbury...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nickel

Its a Rickman, thing, Jay. It HAS to be nickel plated or all of the coolness oozes out of it. Seriously, you can't powdercoat a Rickman frame. It won't even stick to it.

LTR

Are you being facetious or are you saying that the surface of the magical Rickmanium they make the frame of is impervious to being sandblasted, acid tanked and powdercoated?
There is probably a powdercoat that closely resembles the color of the original frame.
The weight gain would be negligible, if that is an argument.
Once you hang all the parts and engine off it the frame sort of disappears anyway.
Finally, it seems silly, to me, to drop the sort of required coin to plate a frame for a competition machine.

Pfahhh...... who am I to lecture? The heart wants what the heart wants... I probably have more tied up in the A10 tank than the entire rest of the bike including initial purchase price.

It would be like showing up at a wedding in your tuxedo T-shirt. It just looks tacky on a Rickman.

Well, if anyone knows tacky...