I recently acquired an older revolver from an estate. It had been kept poorly, and was covered with a light rust. The rust brushed off easily with some fine steel wool, but it left behind some small pitting here and there.

It occurred to me that if I had the gun nickel-plated that would solve the pitting problem, so I'm looking for recommendations of companies that do that kind of job.

Exactly what kind of gun is it? May not make economical sense depending on model of gun. "Fords custom gun refinishing" in Florida has a good reputation but is not cheap and your looking at a few months. They have a few options to choose from as far as level of refinish. I believe they have a pricing list on their website. Just look up their site. A few pictures would be helpful in determining if you should just keep it as a shooter or to make it beautiful again.

Last year I had my dad's S&W .38 M&P revolver (1920) nickeled by Ford's in Crystal River, Florida. Results were exceptionally good. Nickel covered the pitted spots under the wood grips. All of the stamping (name, Logo, caliber, Patent dates, etc.) were untouched. Took them 5 months to finish. Check their website. Worth the wait.

I have had good luck with electroless nickel. Looks good, wears long.

Accurate Plating & Weaponry in Newville AL did great work on my Grandfather’s old 32-20.

Nickel plating will NOT cover pitting or other defects.

There used to be an urban legend that Colt Pythons that had an imperfect polish job "OOPS" were nickel plated to hide the problem.
In fact Colt said the revolvers had to be MORE perfect then guns that were to be blued because the plating made the defects even more noticeable.

So, unless the gun has the pitting or other defects polished out they'll stand out even more.

There are very few refinishers around who have the high order polishing skills to polish out even light pitting and not round off defined edges or leave ripples in the flats.

One who can is APW-Cogan.

Professional Gunsmith - Accurate Plating & Weaponry | Cogan Custom

Ford's used to be very well known for high order polishing and was famous for a Python Royal Blue "wet look" blue job and perfect nickel plating.
However, a year or so ago some members of the Colt forum sent Pythons to them for rebluing and one request to have the stampings refreshed.
What they got back were ruined guns.
The re-mark job looked like a kid used an electric pencil to re-do the Colt pony on the side plate and the metal under the bluing looked like they were polished with a rock.

The report was that Ford's had hired a new worker and he was a gun butcher.
I haven't heard if the problem has been corrected or not so I don't recommend them until I hear some current feed back.
So, use them at your own risk...

Ford's Custom Gun Refinishing | Crystal River, FL

Refinishing can be expensive, the first thing to do is to determine what make and model of revolver we are talking about. That being said, I am not a huge fan of nickel plating, I think hard chrome is far more durable and a lightly pitted surface can be media blasted before applying the hard chrome plating. A media blasted surface will help to hide minor pitting.

Depending on what exactly the revolver is, it may be worth quite a bit even in it's current condition.
(TR's Colt revolver from SanJuan Hill showed up in a shoebox on a closet shelf in a house in Fla(?). Rightfully returned to Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill home from where it had been stolen some 15 or 16 years before)
Your gun may just be valuable in it's current condition. Refinishing rarely increases value on a firearm.

Don't do anything to it till you investigate and find out what you have.
Even a 'light cleaning' can destroy value.

If the gun turns out to be a common item, then decide if putting money into getting it plated in some form is worth it.

I'd personally go with a bead blast and hard chrome plate on a common revolver. Makes for an excellent corrosion resistant finish and looks great too even if it starts out with some imperfections in the metal. No laborious and expensive polishing need be done.

Thanks to all who offered their input.

The OP obviously wasn’t aware of certain issues with the gun. There’s no reason to leave this up and running.

__________________
"I also cook."