The drain-plug in the sink of my bathroom vanity is made of a plastic base with a metal top (brass by the looks of it) that is chrome plated.
The chrome-plating developed some scratches which turned black over time (oxidation I presume).
My cleaning lady couldn't stand the eye-sore and got too enthusiastic with the polishing. She used Brasso copper-polish on it and managed to cut through the chrome-plating and through the underlying copper-plating as well. (You can see the yellow brass coming through just left and top of the center.)
That was last week. Now the exposed copper-plating is starting to go dark as well.
I can't easily get a replacement. This plug was made by a factory that went bankrupt 10 years ago.
It is a peculiarly shaped part of the whole faucet and drain assembly on the sink. (Faucet has a lever at the base which pushes the drain-plug up from below when the drain is closed. The plug itself is a seperate part, but the plastic base goes 3" into the drain where it sits on top of the lever. The metal top is glued or epoxied to the plastic base. I can't separate top and base without damaging the base.)
To make matters worse the plug is a non-standard size, in between the standard small and large drain-plugs. I can't just put in a standard rubber plug. This also makes replacing the whole drain-faucet assembly a problem due to non-standard sizes.
The wife is really starting to nag me about the eye-sore… Something needs to be done.
So, my best idea so far is to refinish the metal cap. I have never done anything like that so what are my options?
Best Answer
I had been trying, in vain, to find a replacement plug for days.
Hence I was looking towards refinishing options.
Due to Corona lockdown all shops here are closed. Plumbing suppliers with a web-shop still do mail-order, but I wasn't having any luck finding a match for the plug.
I resorted to emailing/chatting to customer support on various webshops without much success. And I started calling every plumbing supplies and installation outfit in a 50 mile radius.
Miracles do happen apparently...
Called supplier nr. 15 on the list.
The lady there started to laugh about halfway into my story. Turned out she had exactly the same vanity at home and the same scratching problem 2 years ago.
She also had the solution.
When the original factory closed 10 years ago the inventory and designs were bought by the company Grohe, who integrated them in their own sub-brand called "Ben".
They still make them. Slightly different plastic base nowadays, but it fits.
The reason I couldn't find anything online... Grohe calls these "waste plug" instead of "drain plug", so you never find them in an online search unless you happen to know you need to look for "waste plug".
Additional confusion is caused by the fact that Grohe calls this a 5/4" plug, but that doesn't match any of the actual dimensions of the plug. 5/4" happens to be the size of the pipe-fitting on the siphon that goes under the sink.
So I got my replacement ordered and I can forget about refinishing the original plug.