I do my potmetal plating with the help of the local plater. I have the plater strip the part for me then take it home and eithrt A) sand the part until all of the pits are sanded out.....think of it as block sanding primer, you sand the high spots down....in this case you are actually "shrinking" the part because you are taking metal away until you get to the bottom of the pit. OR B) drill out the pits, take the piece back to the plater and have it copper plated, bring the piece back home and solder all of the drilled holes up, sand, buff and take it back to the plater to have it triple plated. The big expense in the plating process is labor, if you don't mind doing alot of that and your plater will work with you, you can cut a BIG chunk off the price of your plating. A couple other benefits of doing the prep work yourself is you probably don't have the industrial sized sanders etc that the platers have, those can ruin a piece quick if they have some production guy sanding down your intricate piece. Also when you bring in a part that's ready to plate the turn around time is extremly fast.