Patent ID: 6997787

Claim:
A process for forming a decorative surface upon an outboard surface of a wheel disc, the process comprising the steps of: (a) providing a cutting tool for smoothing a wheel surface that includes a rhombic shaped body portion having a mounting aperture formed therethrough and an insert having a cutting tip carried upon one end of the body portion, the insert having arcuate leading and trailing edges, the insert also having a zero degree land formed thereabout whereby the cutting edge of the insert is maintained tangent to the wheel surface; (b) mounting a machined vehicle wheel including a wheel rim and having a wheel disc extending radially across the wheel rim on a lathe; (c) rotating the wheel; (d) urging the cutting tool provided in step (a) with a uniform pressure against an outboard surface of the wheel disc and traversing the cutting tool in a radial direction across the outboard surface of the wheel disc to smooth at least a portion of the outboard wheel disc surface such that the smoothed portion of the wheel disc outboard surface has a polished appearance; (e) depositing a layer of semi-bright nickel directly upon the portion of the wheel disc surface smoothed in step (d) and; (f) depositing a layer of bright nickel over the semi-bright nickel layer deposited in step (e1); and (g) depositing a layer of chromium over the bright nickel layer deposited in step (f).