Would black chrome be TRAKable for a custom?

[chepp]

Searches on the H.A.M.B. kind of hints that it was done but isn't conclusive.
By black chrome, I mean any sort of dark plating (NOT a simulated paint type coating).

This kind of plating was done on non-automotive things like metal parts of furniture and on guns (may have been called black nitride coating). I don't remember seeing it at car shows when I was a kid in the '60s but maybe I missed it.

I'm working on a model of a circa 1964 custom of my own design so I'm wondering if it could look authentic if it had some parts with a dark plated finish.

[spex84]

I'm pretty sure that's a no...I've never seen black chrome or anodizing in any historical photo or article. It's a very 2000s-2010s thing to "murder out" a vehicle by turning all the trim black, so that influence would be hard to shake; it would look contemporary/non-traditional by default.

I've read that Menonnites used to paint the chrome trim on their new cars black, because the chrome was not humble enough. But that's about it.
Sounds interesting though! Maybe share over on the Drastic Plastics board and we can all go check it out there

[Deleted]

I tend to agree with Chris on all points and I might add that during WWII cars were made without chrome trim to support the war effort.

Your call Bob.

[ChrisV]

As far as traditional rods and customs go, I have to agree with Chris - I can't recall having seen any cars with blacked out trim in any of my vintage car magazines.

[Bernard Kron]

When I was living in SoCal in the 70's I knew an old machinist named Art "Bud" Stump who built very expensive one-off custom racing bicycle frames to order. Even then Bud's racing bicycle frames cost several thousand dollars and he only built one of two per year. One of his high-dollar options was to have the frame set black chromed. It was breathtaking to see, more of a deep three-dimensional dark brown than a gunmetal blue or true black. I first met him in 1970 and he had already built a half-dozen or so frames so he was doing black chrome as decoration in the late '60's at least. But I never saw black chrome on show cars, customs or hot rods. It seemed to be more a metal-tech sort of deal, the kind of thing that aircraft industry types were into, than a hot rod or custom thing.

This is off the subject but may be of interest to fellow TRaKsters. Bud Stump was a legend among L.A. area machinists. In the 30's he had trained in Germany as a jeweler but had returned home to Los Angeles around 1938 and parlayed his "golden hands" into working as a machinist in the aircraft industry in L.A. Bud had done the prototype machining on the original scrolls for the turbochargers used on fighter planes during WWII, had worked for Paxton and had been on the Novi crew after the war at Indianapolis. He was tight with a lot of the racing car and hot rod types (including Mickey Thompson, the Summers Brothers and Al Sharp who, many may not realize, had been California cycling road racing champ around 1960).  Because of a relationship he had had with the late Earl Gilmore, of Gilmore Oil and Gilmore Stadium fame, Bud also was on the payroll with A.F. Gilmore, Co. In exchange for a very large garage in an industrial alley in Santa Monica Bud owed Gilmore one restoration per year from the family's extensive classic and antique car collection. When I knew him I remember one year he built virtually all of a curved dash Oldsmobile from scratch, from factory blueprints around the original crankcase casting. I remember that, despite the fact that Art (for some reason we called him Art rather than Bud which virtually everyone but our circle did) was probably in his early 70's at that time, in order to get the Olds built,  he decided to teach himself woodworking which for some reason he had never learned. Stump was a pure one-man shop, the only things he didn't do were paint (because there was a fabulous painter named Lancaster down the way in the alley where Art had his shop) and upholstery (because he considered sewing to be "women's work"). He could do metal finishing and bodywork with the best of them but now it was time to work in wood, and so he did!

[chepp]

Thanks, all. I'm sure that you're right -- but I was hoping that you wouldn't be!

Bernard, thanks for the Bud Stump info. I'd never heard of him. It's great to read about skilled folks.

[spex84]

Bernard, once again with the fascinating history!! Love it, that is just so darn cool.
Given more time, I'm sure Art could have learned upholstery too, as long as he didn't mind being a student to some badass mexican dudes!

[Larry B]

actually the black chrome started 911 variant in the late 70's as a actual color offering never under stood that whole paint a car chrome if i recall it was also in bronze and gold but only seen one in black so don't think it ever took off other then for that murdered out look

[chepp]

"Sounds interesting though! Maybe share over on the Drastic Plastics board and we can all go check it out there" —spex84.

Thanks. Here it is:
drasticplastics.proboards.com/thread/5670/model-month-entry-thread-june
Scroll down to the yellow 1960 Ford custom.

[spex84]

That's rad Charley!! I had already been admiring that project over on MCM, didn't know it was the same one mentioned in this thread.

After all that, unless you pointed it out, I never would have noticed it was "black chrome"...it looks a lot like Alclad in the photos because it's quite reflective.