Silver small, irregular glass objects

English Transcription of Video:

[Music] Hi thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding I'm Alix and today our project is re-silvering this concave automotive mirror we're going to be using our 3d Glass Mirror Kit and this kit is designed specifically to silver non-flat kind of a regular small pieces so in general there's two basic ways to create a silver mirror you can do the spray silver process or the pouring silver process now first off i know that spray isn't necessarily the right process for me on this piece because this is small and so when you spray it you're going to have a lot more overspray which means that i would be wasting my chemicals so i know that I'm going to opt for pouring for this particular piece however it's not going to work in the traditional sheet glass process because that relies on being able to keep the glass level and rely on the surface tension and the chemicals to flow evenly over the surface and i just can't really feasibly do that on this concave type of surface so i need another technique to apply the chemicals and this kit utilizes our shallow bath technique which means that we are going to be holding the pieces in these trays and gently rocking the chemicals over the surface of the piece and that's going to allow to get into that slight curve of our piece so this kit can be used on a lot of different pieces that are similar to this so for example I've got this glass rondelle here it's a beautiful piece of glass and it's not completely flat and it's quite small I also have a beveled piece it's got some nice glue chipping and of course the beveled edge once again not completely flat and then i have this other piece this bowl and i wanted to show you this as an example of a piece that wouldn't work in this process so regardless of which side i was going to do you know if I wanted to silver this side and along here the shallow bath isn't going to work because it's not going to allow the chemicals to gently flow over the surface and the same as the inside so this is a piece that would make sense to do the spray process with or even our drip process so i know for my piece here the right process is going to be the shallow bath technique the 3d mirror kit has all of the different components that i need for this process and today we are going to walk through that process one thing I do want to mention is that pouring silver is most often used for a second surface mirror so what i mean by that is if you think of like a basic mirror perhaps one that's in your bathroom when you're looking at it you're looking at the glass with the layer of silver behind it and the backing paint behind that so the silver is on the second surface if i wanted to silver the front surface of a piece that's more often done with spray silver but there are some exceptions if you are silvering a piece for scientific purposes then we just recommend that you reach out to us either in the comment box below or through the contact us page on our website angelgilding.com because we know that some of those mirrors are a bit more specialized and we'd be happy to advise you on the best process for your piece but if you have a piece similar to ours stay tuned and we'll walk you through the process our project today is re-silvering of an old mirror and so we actually need to first remove the original mirror layer and that's going to start with removing the backing paint for that we're going to be using our multi strip and a paint scraper I'll include links of all the products that we use in that description box below but you can see here I'm just applying a pretty even layer of the multi strip it's not essential that it's exactly even but you know you want to get a relatively even layer and then let that sit on the surface the amount of time that it needs really is going to depend on the paint so here I left it about 15 30 minutes and then checked it you can see I'm just checking there and I can see that it has in fact lifted the paint so i can go ahead and scrape the surface off oftentimes on old mirrors it has a copper layer and so i can see that that's what's showing once I lift this paint off so gently scraping off the backing paint that's exposing my copper layer and now I can give it a nice quick rinse off to remove any of that residual multi strip now moving on to the mirror remover mirror remover is a multi-purpose remover and this is going to remove both the copper and the silver layer at the same time just using a regular cotton swab dipping that in the mirror remover and then gently wiping that over the surface of the glass

When working to remove the mirror you don't need to scrub aggressively just take your time making sure that chemical comes in contact with all the surfaces that are mirrored and you can see that it really does come up relatively easily there

Once I've rinsed off the mirror remover I'm going to apply a vinyl mask now as my pieces concave I need to ensure that I'm masking the correct side of the glass and that's going to be the opposite side of the piece that I'm silvering so I'm masking off the side that i do not want to silver now the vinyl mask does come in the 3d mirror kit and I've just cut it down generally to size and pulling off the backing the vinyl mask is going to do two things for me it's going to provide a little bit of protection to the glass so that it is not scratched in the process and it's also going to prevent the silvering from being deposited on the surface now some of that silvering may creep over and we'll talk about that a bit later that's not a big deal but it does help to make that clean up a little bit easier later on

once that's done now I'm going to go into the deep clean cleaning is a really important part of the mirroring process I'm using my powder cleaner I've got my gloves on I'm going to be using gloves for the rest of the process and my sponge and I'm working on my cleaning mat you want to have a designated clean area and really taking time to clean this i always say that you're going to clean that piece of glass that you mirror better than you've cleaned anything else and even though i don't really worry about the other side I'm still going to clean it well because I want to make sure any kind of contamination is off of both sides especially in the shallow bath technique because both sides are going to come in contact with chemicals so I want to make sure it's all clean next up we're measuring the chemicals I like to measure them so that I have everything ready to go for me first up is the tin for silver you can see I've got the dilution ratios listed for you there

working with my 10 milliliter cylinder and my 16 ounce cup now throughout the rest of the process we're going to be working with distilled water what I'm doing there is I'm just rinsing out my 10 ml cylinder and also using that rinse water to dilute the tin for silver

I'm measuring up to my three ounce line now I've got that Tin for silver ready to go I can measure out each of the three solutions here so we've got pouring silver solution pouring silver activator and our dosage cups

i do find that it's helpful in the 3d process to use a little bit more of the chemicals than i might use in the sheet glass process that's a little bit of a personal preference but what's essential is that you're using equal portions of each of the three chemicals that's really important to make sure that the chemistry works properly now I'm moving on to the actual silvering process first off rinsing it really well as you recall i cleaned the piece really well now I'm rinsing it with the distilled water once again distilled water throughout now I'm using my tin tub this kit comes with three specific tubs first you saw the rinse tub now we've got the tin tub and just pouring that tin over the surface and you can see what's happening here is it's just creating a shallow bath of the chemicals that will generally rock over the surface so i just gently rock the piece back and forth for at least 30 seconds if it ends up being a minute that's okay 30 seconds is just kind of a general guide post then lifting the piece out going back to that rinse tub and then rinsing really really well rinsing is one area where people can run into trouble by not rinsing enough so really take your time rinse that piece really well front and back making sure any excess tin has been rinsed off of the surface once you're confident that you've got that piece fully rinsed off you can use your silver tub now you can see that I've already used this tub before so it does have some silver on there but it's just silver and that's a designated tub so it's certainly okay to use that again because it's not cross-contamination it's all the same product now I've combined those three chemicals together and I'm pouring them over the surface of the glass once again gently rocking it

so I'm allowing this to deposit for about three to five minutes and you want to rock it back and forth the chemicals need to wash over the surface especially in this shallow bath technique this allows the chemicals to really flow evenly if I just let the piece sit there then you may find that there's one part that because of gravity they just don't get to the chemicals just don't reach and obviously that would create an uneven deposit so just gently rocking it back and forth once I feel like I've got a really brilliant silver finish and I lift it up take a look and rinse it really well just put a little note there you can see you know take a look we do have a waste treatment kit as part of this kit and there's a whole other video and information about the waste treatment kits so certainly take a look at that and then tilt it to dry you'll want to make sure that you allow it to dry completely and once that silver is fully dry then you're going to go ahead and paint the silver now before worrying about that vinyl on the other side you're going to want to paint the silver and that's going to protect it

we're using a really nice foam brush here but a foam roller is also a really good option

[Music]

now that we've fully silvered our piece we've painted the back of it to protect it we just have some finishing touches as you'll recall we put that vinyl mask over the front of our mirror so we're going to want to lift that off and the advantage of having this vinyl mask is two-fold one it protected the glass so that it didn't get scratched during the process but it also makes this cleanup easier it's inevitable that we're going to have some cleanup you know some silvering or paint can creep under the surface a little bit but it does make cleanup easier all I really have is just a little bit of paint here so I'm actually just going to use the edge of a flat razor blade here and just scrape that up

that comes up nice and easily there

and there we go I've got my fully silvered concave mirror and as you saw this is a pretty unique process it's a really great solution for some of your more unusual mirrors and we know that this is something that may be a little bit confusing and you may have some questions on if this is the right process for you so certainly leave those questions in the comments below or you can always email us through our contact us page on our website angelgilding.com be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel so that you are in the know on all of our future videos and check out that website angelgilding.com thanks for stopping by [Music]