guygadois 

Saw this Puch for sale. Seller claims it is copper plated which I hear Puch made at some point. Hard to find? What is the collectibility on this frame?

Cheers,

GG

icepick_trotsky 

Neat

rhm

I thought that copper playing was part of a chromo-velato finish. So originally the copper was polished and coated with a colored transparent lacquer. If I'm right,, then "collectability" would require the original finish mostly intact.

FBinNY 

BITD- we used to call paint over chrome "acrylichrome". It made for some specatcular finishes with the polish of the chrome showing through the colored acrylic paint on top. There were a number of colors including the copper, gold, "black chrome" and stunnign emerald emerald green. We used to import Carltons with this finish and sold a decent number (for those days) before the style faded.

The paint on chrome finishes, while beautiful when new, were very delicate and a gentle scratch against a post, for example, would strip whole sections of color off. They were impossible to touch up well, and I suspect that the combined high cost of polish plating, and delicate paint, kept theme from becoming an enduring trend.

However, I believe that this Puch frame was actually copper plated, not copper colored paint over chrome. The tip-off is that copper plate dulls, whereas paint over chrome doesn't.

catonec 

thats almost cool, but why? purely aesthetics or is there an advantage? It has to make for heavy frame.

jwarner

Just gotta' hope someone didn't sweat some water pipe together and glue on a head badge and some drop outs . That would be neither laterally stiff, nor vertically compliant.

I've seen this before. They are beautiful bikes.

juvela

yes indeed. had one or two of these come through. one i recall was purple chromo-velato.

Essthreetee

Hey!!!! Get outta my neighborhood. Haha. I have emailed his guy MANY TIMES with no response. He says in the ad that text works best, but doesn't include a number. I have tracked down the house (small town) and knocked on the door a couple of times, but nobody is ever home. It's not my size, but I thought it was cool...and the price seemed good.

David Newton

The best chrome finish, is called "Triple Chrome Plated" and has the steel first copper plated, polished, then nickel plated & polished, then finally chrome plated.
I do not know if any chrome plated bikes get triple plated, but this one got pulled before it had the chance.
I think Nickel plated bike parts look the best, I wonder why they stopped doing it?

bikemig 

I have one bike like this; it's a beautiful paint job.

FBinNY 

Actually plating (any) is lighter than paint, because the plating layer is much thinner. However the difference in weight either way isn't enough to matter.

catonec 

interesting, i wouldnt have thought that.

Grand Bois

My parents bought me a Puch Bergmeister in about 1960. It was copper plated under transparent red paint. The result was beautiful, but the bike really didn't have much else going for it. The frame was heavy and the components were low end.

rootboy 

It does remind me of all the plumbing in my basement. Pretty frame. The two brass cable inserts are very interesting.

Hudson308 

I've sprayed candy (transparent) grape purple paint over copper to come up with a deep black cherry color.

Narhay

No fork? Interesting rat-rod look but a frame like that needs the matching fork or it is nigh useless.

crank_addict

Very neat looking. Finding a matching fork might not be that difficult. Although a different finish, it shared the same frame and fork marketed by Sears Roebuck under the Ted Williams brand. Some equipped with Campagnolo Gran Sport.

Depicted advert seeking dealers in the USA 1956, another earlier Steyr made JC Higgins marketed by Sears and a Puch Bergmeister recently listed (mid 60's).

rhm

I really like the copper plated look. How hard is it to copper plate something? Seems to me it was included in a book of third grade level science experiments I had back in the early 70's.

crank_addict

There's the budget version and water based 'Cosmichrome'. Never tried it but curious how durable it is.

Cosmichrome

edit: Here's the US distributer. I suppose they would refer one to an established and trained location. It would be interesting to see the cost vs. powdercoating.
https://goldtouchinc.com/

David Newton

There are diy copper plating kits out there (Google Caswell). I want a Nickel kit, but I want a lot of things...

Lascauxcaveman 

I've thought about that too, but doing research on getting a frame chrome plated, I found at least a couple plating places that do nickel and copper plating too. It's about the same as chrome, around $200-300 for a bike frame. Since the Caswell kits seem start at $169 and require a lot of labor, I'm thinking I'll just drop my frame off at a plater, if I decide to go for it.

fietsbob

Copper in suspension loves to jump on steel even when not doing a proper electro plating job ..

that is the 1st layer of a quality Chrome plating job, 2nd is Nickel

details on how frame was made suggests its low end, under the shiny stuff .

punching a big hole to run housing thru, in the top tube a straight gage 1mm+ wall tube is probably reasonable..

crank_addict

The hole was factory done. No doubt lower end but quite robust tubes. Probably the same tube type going back to the 1930's.