For work, I found a very useful gadget that may work for some marine
apps too. It is a "Brush Plating" kit from a company called Caswell.
Basically, it is a tiny power supply and some chemicals and a set of
"Brushes" that allow you to brush on metal plating to small parts.
The kit has gold, nickel, bronze, chrome and silver chemicals. it
includes some pens that really look as if they will work for fine
details but I have only used the coarse ones so far.
As an experiment, I took stainless shim stock and used one of those
engraving pens to sign my name in cursive impressed into the steel.
Then I brush plated over this and then rubbed the shim stock on a flat
surface (a granite surface plate) on fine abrasive paper leaving shiny
steel with very pretty gold cursive writing on it.
One very interesting product they have that I have not tried yet is a
boron nitride plating system. Boron Nitride (BN) is a very hard
material for wear resistance. I could imagine using it for gun
barells etc and other wear applications. I wonder if you could coat
props with it.
Another interesting possibility is to apply Titanium Nitride to
surfaces such as props. TiN is another very hard material that
happens to be a good electrical conductor. it has to be applied in a
vacuum system and not by plating.
I have always wanted to find some marine application of the stuff I do
for work so if anybody can think of any good apps for precision
plating, let me know.