Chrome Zamac Anyone?

Do you know what zamac is? It is the metal that most cheap toys are made from, and also the metal that most of the consumable world is made from. Zamac stands for Zinc, Aluminum, something, something, something, and it is a metal that, due to its cheap combination of materials, is very common and very difficult to attach metal plating to.

So, metal plating—most of you probably know what that is all about—takes a cheap metal or material and attaches a metal of your choice to the outside, like a skin of fancy metal added to the outside of the object. Most of us have some silverware somewhere in the house that uses this technique.

So, I deal with a lot of Hot Wheels cars in my artwork. Hot Wheels are made of zamac metal, a particularly cheap version of zamac metal. I thought to myself, “Self, you need to get yourself a metal plating kit and make yourself some nifty metal-plated cars.” Yeah…that’s the plan!

Except, metal plating works exceptionally badly on zamac metal…and this is where our story ended, mostly.

The pics below are my efforts to copper plate Hot Wheels cars. They are gold in color as I painted them with a translucent paint to hide the inconsistencies in the plating process. I think they turned out pretty well. I may never do this again as it took forever to get decent results, probably why you won’t see many folks trying it. They’re smart!