Rare Pistol Lighter Restoration - IMCO 6900

Restoration of rusty gun shaped pistol lighter. I will restore this cool looking cigarette pistol lighter and make it work again.
Huge thanks to W2M industries for always loaning me their laser cleaner, if you are interested in buying one you can contact them from: w2m.fi/?lang=en
ABOUT THE LIGHTER:
This lighter was manufactured by austrian manufacturer IMCO. It was made around the 1960's. The model of the lighter is 6900 "gunlite". This is not a firearm but the design is inspired by a small pistol. I bought this lighter from ebay for $10 which may seem a lot but these sell for much higher prices in good condition because they are very collectable and the company eventually stopped manufacturing lighter in 2012 and the brand was aquired by Japanese company Windmill.
ABOUT THE RESTORATION:
The disassembly is quite simple. Only the wheel and other parts held in place by the pin that goes through it need a little effort to remove. I used a precision drill to remove the pin. There is only one screw and the other parts just snap on in this great design.
I used a laser cleaning machine to remove the rust. It uses a high power laser to burn the rust, paint and other dirt off the surface without damaging the metal like many other methods. Only downside is these devices are more expensive than e.g. a sandblaster.
Next I polished the metal by sanding from 400 grits up to 2000 grits and polished it with metal polish compound. The polished metal was cleaned. The pieces were put into an acid activation bath for few minutes. This allows the metal to be plated in the plating solution. Next the parts were put into an electroless plating bath which plates the parts with nickel to protect them from rusting in the future. Electroless plating has number of advantages over electroplating which uses electricity to force the plating. These include more even plating even from inside of the parts. The downside it that it's more complicated and expensive method so it need much more understanding of the chemistry to have a robust plating system.
Also the handles were polished with plastic polishing compound. The lighter was then assembled and the drilled pin was replaced.
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it. Thanks for watching!
The following links are affiliate links. By clicking them you are directed to a amazon (or other) product page. If you purchase that or any other product I will get a small fee but you will not pay any extra. This is an easy way to support this channel and allow me to keep making these videos Thank you for watching and reading!
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