Thanks Leon. Yes the plan was to do the plating first and machine operations afterward. Surprisingly, there was very little nickel deposited on the cylinder walls. I had absolutely no luck in finding a facility that could/would do electroless plating and had to resort to conventional electroplating. I was a bit disappointed that the plating did not reach down to the base of the fins but was told to expect that.
The kick lever return spring, of which I made several, was really not much work at all once I was set up. I had a pair of worn diagonal cutters that it welded a 1/4" drill rod a little over an inch on one side and a 3/16" of the same on the other, quenched it when it lost color, and that became my tool for bending the 2 different sized loops on the spring. I heated about an inch of the end just enough to be able to formed the smaller inside loop and slid it inside a 11/32" hole drilled into the outer circumference face of a piece of 1" round stock held in the lathe chuck. I then clamped a piece of 2x3 spruce scrap wood in the toolpost milling vise and put pressure on the back side so I could roll the chuck towards me ( counterclockwise) with an adjustable wrench on the jaws of the chuck. With each revolution I backed off the pressure a bit to accommodate the next layer of spring material. I had left the belts engaged on the lathe so it wouldn't spring back on me. I first tried using 3/4" stock for the mandrel but it was too sharp of a bend and kept breaking the spring. At that time I experimented with annealing the spring first which did in fact allow me to form the spring, but I couldn't re harden it so I opted to increase the size of the mandrel. I had to guess at how many turns to turn the chuck but it wasn't that critical because the last coil had to be straightend a bit anyway before forming the outer loop. I had a 10' length of stock to work with and used about 80% of it. Each spring used up about 23.5 " of stock.
One of the owners of this bike, who lives reasonably close to me, has gotten actively involved in finding sources for having things like the rollers, pivots, & pinion gear made. He has the advantage of living in a state that is not as environmentally obsessed as mine, which is discouraging manufacturing companies from staying here, never mind trying to start up. Long story short - this project just might be completed this year thanks to his efforts!
Dewey