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Silvering!

Hand Lettering topics: Sign Making, Design, Fabrication, Letterheads, Sign Books.

Moderators: Ron Percell, Mike Jackson, Danny Baronian

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Catharine C. Kennedy
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 5:28 am
Location: Chatham Center, NY

Silvering!

Post by Catharine C. Kennedy »

Hey! It actually DOES work! I've been putting off even trying the process for months- serious gumption block, but Sarah made it so easy, I had no further excuses, tried it tonight & got 2 decenct mirrors! Now, we're NOT talking Primo, here, but it DOES work! Slick! Maybe I'll even get to the Angel gilding part... (not tonight!)
Thanks to all those who "egged" me on! Oh, :lol: :D :D YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Catharine C. Kennedy
Chatham Center, NY
Mike Jackson
Site Admin
Posts: 1705
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:02 pm
Location: Jackson Hole, WY
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Post by Mike Jackson »

Catharine,
I seldom get commercial quality, edge to edge, perfect silvering. Heck, I doubt I ever got one of those. Normally, I will have and inch to two inches of border in paint, so I always know I have a little room for flaws. Also, on most sign designs, you end up with very little mirroring showing unless it is an old "Rawson and Evans" look alike. A few flaws or darker areas are common and sometimes welcome.

Have fun,
Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator
Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY

Photography site:
Teton Images
Jackson Hole photography blog:
Best of the Tetons
Catharine C. Kennedy
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 5:28 am
Location: Chatham Center, NY

further questions

Post by Catharine C. Kennedy »

So the glass can be painted or water gilded as well as angel gilded before the silvering? What happens when you scrub the glass to clean it? How come this doesn't gum up the paint or water gilding?
Catharine C. Kennedy
Chatham Center, NY
Mike Jackson
Site Admin
Posts: 1705
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:02 pm
Location: Jackson Hole, WY
Contact:

Post by Mike Jackson »

Catharine,
I paint the borders after the silvering. With the right paint (as mentioned in the other posts) you might be able to silver afterwards, but that is not the normal set of steps.

Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator
Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY

Photography site:
Teton Images
Jackson Hole photography blog:
Best of the Tetons
Catharine C. Kennedy
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 5:28 am
Location: Chatham Center, NY

Post by Catharine C. Kennedy »

Okay- so how do you "restrain" the silvering? Wouldn't any glue dams or masking foul the just cleaned (with much effort) surface? Forgive me if I'm slow to understand!
Catharine C. Kennedy
Chatham Center, NY
Mike Jackson
Site Admin
Posts: 1705
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:02 pm
Location: Jackson Hole, WY
Contact:

Post by Mike Jackson »

Catherine,
(You "can" used hot glue around the edges to build up a dam....BUT...don't let that concept cloud the big picture.)

You just silver the whole glass and if you have a few imperfections around the edges, don't worry about them. If you don't "back up" the silver with the black back-up paint in the border area, it will become clear when the silver strip is applied. After you have stripped all unnecessary silver areas, in this case the border and large areas of the background, you then clean the glass and fill those areas with paint, leaf, pictures and so forth. You only have to worry about having a good silver deposit in the areas that get backed-up.

Okay, going back to the glue dam. Rick did that when we first started watching silvering, so we all thought we needed to do that. We all bought expensive glue guns and used the glue. Then we went back to later Conclaves and he had basically stopped using it, but I think it still has uses for Angel gilding.

Issues with glue dams:
  • It is expensive.
    It takes extra time to apply.
    It heats the edges of the glass, causing a deeper gild or silver near it unless you let is cool a long time.
    It sometimes released before you wanted it to release.
    It sometimes stuck so tough it added a lot of extra time scraping.
    Silver is much too cheap to worry about a few ML dripping off the glass.
With that said, if you were only needing to Angel Gild a 16" x 16" area on a large piece of glass, you wouldn't want to gild the whole thing edge to edge. In that case, the glue dam makes a lot of sense.

Hope that helps!
Mike
Mike Jackson / co-administrator
Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY

Photography site:
Teton Images
Jackson Hole photography blog:
Best of the Tetons
Catharine C. Kennedy
Posts: 99
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 5:28 am
Location: Chatham Center, NY

Post by Catharine C. Kennedy »

Thanks- that helps lots! Silver strip wasn't in the kit! Ahhhhhhh, more goodies!
Catharine C. Kennedy
Chatham Center, NY
Sarah King
Posts: 167
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 8:43 pm
Location: Oak Park IL
Contact:

silvering

Post by Sarah King »

Thanks, Catharine - I think it's pretty exciting too. I'll look into adding the silver strip to the kit. It's all a work in progress.

On the glue gun issue - I usually mirror glass for use in stained glass windows so I haven't worked with the glue gun very much. But I have noticed that the folks who acid etch copper and zinc build their dams with wax. I haven't tried it yet but I was wondering if anyone else had and what happened with that. If it works, it should be cheap and reusable. I'll let you know how my experiments go.

I have had some interesting success in mirroring over the back-up paint and I plan to do more of that soon. You can polish the paint with cerium oxide to clean glass. You end up with a gold design on a silver background - low contrast but really neat. If you lead mirror over the paint, the paint lifts off in the process but the design remains. Lead mirror will tarnish the previuosly deposited silver but I thought it looked kind of cool.

Again, experiments in progress - it's a lot of fun when it's not totally frustrating.
Sarah King
AngelGilding.com
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