Herbert J. Hawkins Polishing and Plating of Metals

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. There are all sorts and conditions of men among electroplaters. Some few among them are unusually well-informed and intelligent men, masters of their art and of many things not immediately connected with it; but the majority of the rank and file, as in most other businesses, either from force of circumstances or from choice, have confined themselves to one line or class of plating, until they have become specialists. This course is, we think, rarely adopted deliberately, but goes on gradually and unconsciously, from the fact that they have had the most experience, and consequently the best success in particular lines; and so we have nickel platers who know little of gold or silver work, jewelry platers who cannot successfully use nickel and copper on large work, platers of iron and steel who are lost on silver ware and musical instruments, etc.<br><br>When such a man is driven from his particular line by the temporary loss of a situation, he is apt to feel keenly his deficiencies in the general knowledge of his profession and to make spasmodic attempts to remedy them. Under these conditions, reference to his ability in nickel plating in a jewelry town, or compliments on his skill with gold in a copper plating plant, are apt to strike him as a bitter mockery and make him regret the fact that he allowed himself to become a specialist - even a skilled one.<br><br>This is a wrong condition of things, to say the least.