Officers Badge plating question

[Malcolm Davey]

Here you go Simon

Dirk Meyer

Goldschmiedemeister

registered conservator in gold and silver smithery

fire-gilding studio

Neppen1

D 88167 Maierhöfen

dirkmeyer@fire-gilding.com
www.fire-gilding.com

[didithevan]

Great posts and some great work on those badges, but back to my original question... Does anyone know what plating methodology the mod uses on its current officers badges? I even tried asking the question of Firmin but got no reply.
I' m pretty certain that it is not an expensive or high quality gold on the gilding as officers badges generally come it at supply prices lower than those that retailers sell them at market rates.

Stu

[Neibelungen]

Firmin's do a mixture gold plating and yellow anodising depending on the material of the badge.
Aluminium are anodised with a yellow acid dye bath.
Gilding metal and brass are a bright hard gold over a nickel underplate, usually about 1/3 - 1/2 micron thickness of gold over 8 microns of nickel.

Buttons tend to vary more depending on the customer and the amount of use they will have. Matted and burnished buttons use a matt clear lacquer to achieve the effect.

All their plating was done in house when I last visited them about 8 years ago and was identical in setup to the plating shop I worked at for a jewellery manufacturers more than 20 years ago.
To give you some idea of scale, the gold baths were around 500 liters in size and carry around 4kg of pure gold dissolved in them.