- Image by tigerlillyshop via Flickr
BY GIVING his hobby of electroplating an unusual application, Robert E. Parker has gratified a long time desire to reside on a quiet and beautiful island, in an equally beautiful home overlooking Florida waters. Ever since Parker visited Florida, courtesy of the U.S. Navy, during World War II, he had wanted to live there.
However, the pressing demands of making a living and the good job he had as factory manager for Argus Camera Co. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, kept him from his promised land.The dream of living in Florida grew fainter as Parker continued to advance at Argus, and he whiled away his evening hours by electroplating every and anything Mrs. Parker would let him lay his hands on. This hobby was relaxing to him, and his friends got so used to seeing gold and silver plated objects in the Parkers’ home, that they nicknamed Bob, “King Midas” (of the golden touch).
The electroplating process is one by which a thin coating of metal is imparted to an object by immersing it in an acid solution into which an electrode carrying a low voltage of electricity is introduced. Through the process of electrolysis the acid solution carries atoms of copper or silver, or whatever the plating material happens to be, to the object to be coated, which is usually suspended by a wire in a tank containing the solution.
One day a friend gave Parker a sea shell as a memento of his sea shore vacation. To Parker, the only natural thing was to electroplate the shell. He frankly acknowledges that the first results weren’t satisfactory, so he sent away for more sea shells just to prove to himself that he could do a good job.
Some three dozen sea shells later, Bob produced a shiny and smart looking product from the raw shell. Mrs. Parker decided this silvered sea shell would be the perfect adornment for a new dress, so Bob attached a pin back to the shell, and the germ of an idea that was to prove so successful took hold.
ALTHOUGH Parker didn’t realize it at the time, this one plated sea shell was the start of the formula that made his dream come true. Mrs. Parker’s friends not only admired her sea shell pin, but requested Bob to make similar pins for them.
After he had made and given away more and more of these sea shell pins, the women, who had a feminine desire to be different, asked for variously designed pins. To comply, Parker made silver and gold plated sea shell pins of clusters of shells, unusually shaped shells, and dangling shells.
Not six months had passed, from the time he plated his first shell, until Bob’s friends were urging him to make his electroplating hobby a full time business. At first Parker scoffed at the idea, yet little by little as one good friend after another talked to him seriously about it, he began to yield to the thought. Soon Bob began to day dream of manufacturing his jewelry in Florida, but being a sensible man he decided to get professional opinions before making so drastic a change in his life.
Bob visited jewelry stores, wholesalers, and jewelry distributors, asking for opinions on his shell jewelry. When well over half the opinions were favorable, Parker had all the excuse he needed to switch from managing a camera factory to manufacturing shell jewelry. Exactly six months and two days from the date the first sea shell had been plated, the Parkers moved to Florida and organized the Parker Jewelry Co.
WITH THE aid of his wife, Parker spent the next six months building a production line, constructing storage bins, and making up stock for sale.
The sales plan first adopted by the enterprising Parker Jewelry Co. was to make stock one week, and personally sell it the next week. The novelty and jewelry stores in the Palm Beach area readily, accepted Bob’s product, but sales lagged badly at the retail end.
The Parkers still felt that they had a good idea, and realized that they had to produce different items to stimulate people to buy their product. That is why Parker started plating real sea horses (a sea horse is a semi-tropical fish), small ones for earrings, and large ones for matching brooches. The plated sea horses caught on and the Parker Jewelry Co. was well on the road to success.
Reorders began to pile in so fast that Bob hired a salesman so he could spend all his time manufacturing. Within two years, he asked his father to move to Florida to help him produce toe jewelry.
From their new friends, and their old friends in Ann Arbor, Bob and Helen Parker got ideas. They expanded their line to include not only sea horse and shell jewelry, but pins and earrings of beautifully plated star fish, horseshoe crabs, sand dollars, acorns, sea fans, as well as real four leaf clovers and hickory leaves.
This new product expansion plus the sales expansion created as far north as the New England states by Parker’s salesmen made additional manufacturing space necessary. Because of the constant personal attention required by his business, he and Helen decided to buy a home in which they could incorporate their new factory. Less than a year ago, the Parkers bought the home they always dreamed of at Merritt Island, Florida.
The house is a half mile from the road on palm shaded grounds, where Bob grows the hickory leaves he uses for plating. The porch extends right over the water, and one is able to drop a fishing line straight down. Two large back rooms comprise the factory.
Today, Robert Parker states emphatically that he has all the business he can handle. Expanding, to Bob, is out of the question, because this business of his will always be like a hobby to him. Another reason for not expanding is that his products require much hand work and are not adapted to mass production.
THE PROCEDURE used to plate Parker jewelry is basically similar to that used in the Baby Shoe Bronzing Mini Kit. There are certain variations and additional steps which require infinite patience and experience gained through much practice.
With the exception of plant life, which must be processed while green, all the tiny creatures from the sea are bought in dried form from wholesale suppliers. Each animal must be closely examined for breaks in the skin, which are sealed with glue.
The hollow snoot of the sea horse must also be filled with glue so that the plating solutions will not enter the body. The popular sea horses require one other extra step because their tails are normally straight. Bob moistens the straight tail, curls it, and then dips the sea horse into a rapid drying lacquer bath which keeps the tail permanently curled.
In order that electric current will be carried to the sea horse, Parker inserts a short length of copper wire into the body. The other end of the copper wire is attached to a bus bar (seventeen sea horses at a time are attached to the bar). Parker then dips the sea horses into a liquid plastic solution which forms an air tight seal and thus keeps the body from decomposing.
After drying, the animals are given a bronze coating. This coating makes the entire body electro-conductive, so that an even covering of real metal will adhere to the whole body.
To apply the coating, Parker mixes finely ground bronze powder with a thinner in a pressure spray gun. The purpose of the thinner is to soften the plastic sealer just enough so that the bronze powder will adhere to the body of the sea horse. The nozzle of the spray gun is held six to eight inches from the sea horses, and the gun is moved constantly during the spraying to prevent too much powder from forming in one spot and perhaps obliterating the fine detail of the sea horse.
The thinner dries in about ten minutes and the sea horses are ready for their first electroplating kit bath. The plating bath solution contains a salt of the metal to be deposited. For example, if copper is to be deposited, the solution is usually copper sulfate.
- Image by guppiecat via Flickr
PARKER HAS developed additional agents which he mixes in the plating solution, causing the deposited metal to be bright, rather than the normally dull appearance of plated metals. The importance of these additional agents can readily be understood when one considers the intricate design of such delicate creatures as sea horses. It would be almost impossible to buff the deposited metal to a high luster due to the undercuts and shape of the sea animals.
The bronzed sea horses are immersed in the copper solution, the current turned on, and almost immediately a real copper covering forms on the body. The horses are not removed from the electroplating kit bath until a substantial layer of copper has formed over their entire area.
When removed from the copper bath the sea horse has the properties of copper and Bob is able to solder the jewelry findings right on the sea horse.
Parker then gives the sea horses a dip in a nickel plating bath, forming a protective layer of nickel over the copper, thus keeping the underlayer of copper from oxidizing.
The final coating is either pure silver or twenty-four-karat gold. This final coat is flash plated. In other words, Bob dips the sea horses in either the gold or silver solution just long enough to give the completed article the appearance of an expensively made gold or silver jewelry piece.
A lacquer dip keeps the plated article from tarnishing. Mrs. Parker completes the production process by matching the sea horses for pairs of earrings, storing them, and filling orders.
The Parker Jewelry Co. is now making pins, earrings, necklaces, and charm bracelets, all from former living organisms. Each product is an exact duplicate of the original animal or leaf, and since no two things in nature are ever exactly alike, anyone who buys Parker jewelry can honestly say they have an original, and none else is like it.
Affable Bob Parker is always open to suggestions and willing to plate anything. I’m just wondering whether my speed graphic camera would have become copper or silver if I had mistakenly left it at his home after my most informative visit.
