Silver Plating for Mouthpiece Makers?

[harrisonreed]

This is probably a long shot, but do any mouthpiece makers here outsource plating services for their raw brass pieces? Who do you use?

If you do your own plating in house, what system do you use?

[LeTromboniste]

This is probably a long shot, but do any mouthpiece makers here outsource plating services for their raw brass pieces? Who do you use?

If you do your own plating in house, what system do you use?

AFAIK a lot of makers (and manufacturers, and repair shops) use Anderson Plating.

[OneTon]

I had banjo tone rings nickel plated here in Wichita, prior to 1990. If you’re in Fort Riley, Hiles in KC, MO, might be willing to do something like that. If you are or are not in Fort Riley, I would look for a local plating service, first.it looks like Timo Myllym shows a mouthpiece being plated on YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/@timyllym

[Posaunus]

Don't know about mouthpiece makers, but Dave Friedman did a fine job for me replating a couple of old damaged mouthpieces.

[GabrielRice]

Stork does their plating in house, and they provide plating services for some of the other makers as well.

[harrisonreed]

Yeah, I'm an continuing to build up a business plan for myself, but maintaining a plating machine and dealing with the disposal of toxic chemicals is a headache I don't want if I can avoid it. I am tracking Anderson Plating, thank you Maximilien! They seem to be the best in the business. I imagine if I established a regular business with a big plater like them, getting 50 pieces plated in one go would be reasonable.

[BGuttman]

Anderson doesn't do single mouthpieces; you need to collect a fair number of them to get plated.

As far as I know, Stork will plate single mouthpieces.

Doug Elliott does plating, but I don't think he acts as a service.

The best silver (and gold) plating materials I have used are made by Technics. Enthone and Lea-Ronal also make plating chemistries.

[harrisonreed]

Yeah, I think they would likely plate 50. I was wondering about other options to outsource to besides them.

[Bach5G]

Dave Friedman in Bellingham WA.

[greenbean]

Stork does their plating in house, and they provide plating services for some of the other makers as well.

Stork silver plating is outstanding!...

[harrisonreed]

I'll have to look into Stork too!

[Crazy4Tbone86]

There are pros and cons to doing your own plating. The prep work takes skill and experience. If you are not able to buff metal properly, the finished product will look rather shabby. Degreasing is a very important part. If there is a trace of grease from the buffing compound on the metal, the plating will not hold.

There are different qualities of plating solutions. If you have a mediocre solution, if doesn’t matter how good your skills are. The voltage is important as well….different metals plate better at different voltage levels. Wrong voltage level equals shabby plating.

Then there are those variables that are in a category of their own. Like what? Well…..several years ago, I was hanging out with a buddy of mine who is very good at plating. He was putting gold plate on several rims and inside cups. I heard a splashing sound and then he froze in place. I asked him “are you OK?” He answered “I just spilled $1600 of gold solution.”

[Crazy4Tbone86]

Back about 20 years, I had about 50 mouthpieces (combination of trumpet and trombone) that I prepped and took to Metro Plating near Washington DC. They did the final polish (usually called color buffing) and plated all of them in silver. They did a decent job. I think they required a minimum number of mouthpieces, but I might be mistaken. I have also heard from woodwind musicians who were not as pleased when Metro plated their keys.

Doug Elliott has his shop near that area. I wonder if he uses them? There are a couple of other plating businesses in the DC area as well.

If you check most metropolitan areas, there are usually multiple plating companies that do silver, gold and nickel plating. Of course that is probably the smaller division of their work. The big money in the plating business is chrome…..for motorcycle and auto parts.

[Driswood]

Warburton does silver and gold plating.

[harrisonreed]

If I am starting a mouthpiece business, making mouthpieces, I'm not sure that outsourcing to another mouthpiece maker will be in my best interest. Stork for example is quite expensive. $45 seems pretty good for a single, personal mouthpiece, but that's too much if I was going to offer a product at a reasonable price. I'm sure the price would be different in bulk, though.

It could be that running my own plating machine might not be so bad, but it seems like a huge mess.

[bitbckt]

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[ithinknot]

If this was me, and circumstances/local regulations allowed it, I'd do my own plating. Less for its own sake, more to know exactly what's going on with buffing (if buffing is even the answer) and rim finish. Once it's out of your hands...

[bitbckt]

(TC/The Tubes ate my reply and I’d rather not retype. Summarizing…)

Sub-contracting plus QA more often manufactures a product that meets the spec at cost than not, without specific in-house expertise. The end product is never “out of your hands” unless you’re running a fly by night fulfilled by Amazon operation. The idea that losing control means losing quality is an expensive lesson to learn.

[ithinknot]

Sub-contracting plus QA more often manufactures a product that meets the spec at cost than not, without specific in-house expertise. The end product is never “out of your hands” unless you’re running a fly by night fulfilled by Amazon operation. The idea that losing control means losing quality is an expensive lesson to learn.

Thanks, McKinsey. I don't dispute any of that at textbook scale where anything is competitively outsourceable. I'm less certain that's really what we're talking about here, though. Partially handwork; batch size/potential risk of experimentation relative to total production...

In any case, you're talking to someone who builds harpsichords out of trees and former Kentucky Derby contenders. I don't need a cost-benefit analysis to know that I'm an idiot.

[bitbckt]

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[bitbckt]

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[ithinknot]

Strongly agreed... and I wasn't really looking for a fight, just being snarky about the suggestion that there's no control/quality tradeoff until you reach the "fly by night" level.

In practice, I think there's a wide middle ground where there are a limited number of appropriate suppliers/contractors and - far from an optimized QA operation - experimenting with them might cost you a product volume that you can't really afford to write off, especially in the early stages of growth... or merely introduce non-failure inconsistencies that wouldn't be an issue in most goods, but which brass players tend to notice.

Where feasible, there's also something to be said for knowing how to do the things that you subsequently choose to subcontract... you know what to look out for, good and bad, and can make suggestions that benefit both parties. But there's an initial cost, for sure.

Even in my area - pretty far along the stereotypically uneconomical artisan spectrum - there's quite a bit of component subcontracting. Sometimes because it's better, and sometimes because I could do it 5% more beautifully but at a stupid time cost. But until you know what's possible, you aren't necessarily well equipped to assess what you can get elsewhere.

[harrisonreed]

I'm not sure exactly how much of that was aimed at me. I'm asking this question because I obviously don't know the ins and outs of it. But ... Having had custom mouthpieces made by three different makers now for me, and being told that I was waiting on the shipping turnaround from the plating service by two of them, I suspect that 2 if not 3 out of 3 sub-contract that job out.

100% agree on the environmental issue - there is a right way to do it, that involves a lot of time and paperwork, and a wing way. Neither one appeals to me, particularly. Maybe I will just cut my pieces from Unobtainium.

Once I get there, Anderson will be the first one for me to call.

[CalgaryTbone]

Plus 1 for Stork - they did a great job for me and the cost was reasonable. I used Anderson for some work years ago and it was also good, but I've heard (2nd hand) that they are busier and slower these days, and there were some reports of some minor quality issues. It is worth finding someone you really trust - the mouthpiece that Stork did for me was an old 5G that I played in school/early career that I had gold plated by a company that is no longer in business. Their gold plating started flaking off and I wasn't even playing on it. Stork fixed everything - getting rid of the bad plating and doing a new gold plating job that is still pristine years later.

Jim Scott

[Matt K]

Just do steel only!

[BGuttman]

Just do steel only!

Or Zirconium

[LIBrassCo]

There's several assumptions made here that are not true. If you are looking for a plater, I'd suggest reaching out to any you have in mind directly for their actual terms for doing business. Also, unless you want to spend a nice chunk of your profit margin, do your own finish work.