Hello there. Finally getting to the finishing part of this project. Been getting life out of the way lately.

After sanding the parts surface down to a 1000 grit finish its on to the buffing.  This is my 1 HP floor buffer. it spins at 1850 rpm. Anything above 2200rpm you will have difficultys, it will melt the compounds and embed them in your work,makes a mess too. I use 8 or 10 inch buff wheels. This one is a spiral sewn one. It is medium hard. I use emory compound which is black on this one and is course. On steel it does a remarkable job as you can see here. Sorry I dont have any buffing photos, had no one to take pictures.Now we move on to cleaning with degreasers  at 140 degrees and soap with a distilled water rinse. Once it is clean,on to nickeling. A good quick clean test is dip the part in water and pull it out. If the water runs right off its clean. If the water rolls around an area, that area is not clean. I will have more on this soon.Next pic is ready to drop in nickel tankPic6 The colored plugs are in all the holes in this receiver because we dont want to fill the holes with plating as then the pins wont fit and you will chip the plating.This is my nickel tank. It get heated to 130-140 degrees,has air agitation,comes from the pvc pipe which goes back to a big blower that uses filtered air. Small tank next to it is the nickel rinse tank. Receiver went in for 1 hour and came out like thisNow this gets CAREFULLY washed as you can scratch it. then it is ready for black chrome. Black chrome is just that,black but the nickel shine through it.Chrome gets its shine from the nickel under it, the chrome top coat is like a clear coat over a basecoat paint job. It protects the nickel from the world. I will have more projects soon guys. I appologize  for the delay. Any questions,comments send them in.