It’s been a long road, but we’re finally at the plating stage. Sort of. Plating your bumper actually takes several steps, and the first of them is copper plating. Most of the real chrome you see on the street isn’t bonded directly to the bumper, but bonded to another metal, which is bonded to the bumper; often there are three plates involved. The first plate is copper, which bonds well to steel through electroplating. Before it goes in the tank, we put it through a 4-part cleaning process to remove any particulate from the surface. Then it’s electroplated with 1/1,000th of an inch of copper combined with some organic brighteners, and comes out looking like a new penny. Just as the grinders fixed the straighteners’ marks, and the polishers fixed the grinders’ marks, the copper fills in the polishers’ marks and creates an excellent base coat for our next layer. But before then, we move your bumper off for copper buffing and polish.