Using the 3D Kit with Galena to mirror a rondel

English Transcription of Video:

[Music] Hi thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding I'm Alix and today we are talking and working with Galena mirror now Galena is the ancient term used to describe lead sulfide which is the chemical that we will be depositing onto our glass today Galena mirror is a rich dark color it's often called pewter hematite cobalt it transmits about 35% of available light and it's a really nice deep rich reflective mirror I often think that Galena is a great next step for the glass artist that has become familiar with the silvering process and wants to step up their game wants to try something different and for our demonstration of Galena today I am working with this beautiful glass rondell now we're partnering today with monarch glass studio they're a well-respected glass studio located in Kansas City Missouri and I was talking with Tyler Kimball the chief gaffer over there about his rondelle's recently and I realized that this would be a great way to showcase some of our mirroring and I also thought you guys really should see the work that they're doing there because it's it's pretty impressive so for today we've got this beautiful glass rondell you can see that it's clear in color but it has a really nice texture to it so I'm one side it's smooth and on other side it's got ridges and anytime you have a piece that's got that kind of texture mirroring is a great technique because it's going to emphasize that the the fact that it's reflective means it's going to bounce off of all of those ridges because we're actually going to be mirroring on the ridged side and the way that we're going to be doing this is with our 3d bath technique now this is called a 3d bath technique because we are essentially creating a shallow bath of our chemicals in a way that will help deposit the chemicals evenly over a 3d object so this is often used for small irregular shaped pieces something that would be difficult to maintain the surface tension that you do need for the sheet glass process but then maybe it's too small for the spring process to be truly economical so 3ds the way to go so you'll see I'm using all the different products from the 3d kit now that does come with all of the silver and chemicals so I also have our add-on of our Galena mirror kit this is an add-on kit because it has all the tools supplies that you need to add on to one of our basic mirroring kits so without further ado let's jump right in we'll start this process as we do start all mirroring processes and that's worth cleaning there's the powdered glass cleaner sprinkled on the surface and I'm going to scrub really well with my sponge all of these are parts of the 3d kit and keep in mind that my piece has ridges so I really want to make sure that I've cleaned all of those ridges and I'm going to clean both sides of the glass because they'll both come in contact with the chemicals in this process so it's really important to make sure that both sides are clean and I've got all those ridges once I've got it cleaned I'm going to rinse it well with my distilled water I'm going to be using distilled water from here on out and just spring there into my rinse tub making sure that all of that tap water that was used in the cleaning process has been rinsed off on both sides [Music] once I feel I've got that nicely rinsed off I'll put it to the side and now I want to get all my chemicals measured out now there's two differences with Galena versus silver and we're seeing our first difference here I'm using tin for gold and that's in place of the tin for silver tin for gold is more concentrated so you'll see that I'm gonna be mixing up more than I need for this particular project and that's necessary to ensure that I've got the right dilutions of my tin for gold and handy little trick here is using the distilled water bottle to rinse out that 10 mil cylinder and that just saves a cleaning step for me later and it also helps me to start diluting the chemicals so I do that just a couple times and then I'm gonna move on with my regular jug of distilled water and I'm making up 16 ounces of the tin for gold like I said more than I need for this project but that way I've got the right dilution ratio of my chemicals and it's all set to go for me there Galena is also unique in that it has an extra sensitizer that's going to be my palladium sensitizer and it's not as concentrated it's got actually the same dilution ratio as the tin for silver so I'm going to be measuring some of that out in a separate 10 mil cylinder and a separate 16 ounce cup these are all parts of the Galena mirroring kit and you'll see I'm just tipping it into my 16 ounce cup there and then I'm going to rinse it out again quick little hack making sure that I've got that all nicely rinsed out and I've got my palladium diluted [Music]

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so I've got my sensitizers mixed ready to go for me I'll put them to the side and you can see here I'm measuring out my Galena chemicals I do this three times just showing you here once how I measure with my MEK bottle and I've got those three chemicals ready so now I can move on to the process of tinning rinsing that piece one more time and putting it into my tin tub I'm going to first start with the tin for gold I don't pour an exact amount here I just pour it you know a good amount to ensure that it's going to fully coat the piece and I rock it back and forth in that tub just setting a timer there for about 30 seconds once it thirty seconds have elapsed I will rinse that piece really really well keeping in mind that I only want the tin that's deposited on the glass none of that excess tin to remain around because that's going to affect my mirroring process so taking my time to rinse at both sides once again and then I need to tip out that excess tin that was in my top that's a unique aspect to the 3d process I'll put my piece back in there and then pour out my palladium sensitizer so I've got two processes of tinning before I go on to the mirroring and this is also going to rock for 30 seconds once my 30 seconds have elapsed I'm done with the tinting process and I need to rinse my piece really well you can see there's no color change there's no transformation that I can see on my piece those tin layers are invisible to the naked eye but they are what's going to bond to my chemicals to the glass so those are really important and I want to make sure I've got it rinsed off really well keep in mind your distilled water is the least expensive part of the process and is really important so just take your time and rinse that really really well to make sure any excess tin has been rinsed off

once again focusing on both sides because with the 3d process the chemicals are coming in contact with both sides I've got my separate tub there and I'm just combining now my three Galena chemicals and you can see that I'm doing those in those glass beakers it's not essential that they be beakers but it is useful for them to be either glass or plastic and that's because if you mix the chemicals in a paper cup those chemicals over time can actually eat away at that paper cup and that's not something we want to worry about so just mixing them there to combine them and pouring them into my Galena tub and then I'm going to set the timer and here is where we'll see our other difference with Galena versus silvering and that's in timing Galena takes about 10 to 15 minutes to deposit fully versus silver that's just three to five minutes and I'll tell you I've done a lot of Galena mirrors and every single time I do them I feel like I've done something wrong because I don't see a change it took about two minutes or so for me to see any of that color change that you're seeing there to start to develop and that's just the Galena chemistry it just works slower but you can see with some gentle rocking back and forth it does start to develop and it's a natural for it to deposit in one area faster than another you just want to gently rock it back and forth you don't have to rock the full time but you can see there how over time that chemical is developing and a unique aspect to Galena is that you can actually see a color change develop so you can see there I've got some purpley-brown look and I decided to go the full 15 minutes and by doing that I went past the purple past the brown to this ridge deep cobalt pewter look you can see that it's really nicely evenly deposited over the surface just checking it out to make sure it's how I want it to be and then rinsing really well with my distilled water my chemicals have done their work so any of the excess I want to make sure is rinsed off of the piece on both sides once this is rinsed off really well then I'm going to put it to the side tilted to allow it to dry completely once it's dried I'm going to protect the backing now you can see this is actually the front and you can see that the chemicals have deposited there on the front I'm not going to worry about that right now I'm going to turn it back over and I'm going to protect the galena that I want to keep you want to paint the the mirroring that you want to keep before worrying about the cleanup because you don't want your galena remover to creep over and affect the part of the mirror you want to keep so that black mirror backing paint is part of our 3d kit and I'm just gently rubbing over the whole surface they are painting it well and you do want to check to make sure that the paint is in all of the areas I noticed on this piece that there is just a pin hole where there wasn't any paint that paint is what's going to protect the mirror from tarnishing so you want to take your time and make sure that it's fully coated once that's done then I'm going to once again tilt it and allow that paint to dry completely that takes a couple hours depending on your environment now you can see that it's completely dry and it's a flat matte appearance that's one of the ways you know that it's fully dry and now I can move on to cleaning that like I said there's a lot of that galena chemical on the front and that's because I didn't use the paint mask in the kit I didn't mention that earlier but there is a paint mask so you could mask off this front area but I think that sometimes you can just leave it as is and then worry about cleaning that face up later now Galena bonds very strong to the glass and so it takes a little bit more work to remove any excess so what I'm doing here is just creating a paste with my Galena remover from a glean American and then some pumice that comes in my 3d kit creating a bit of a slurry there between the two and that's going to enable me to chemically remove it with the Galena remover and also abrasive with that gentle extra fine pumice you can see once I do that that that Galena is coming right up you can see the Galena from the other side coming through and I'm going to just keep working through that cleaning up the face of the mirror and then we'll be all set here it is I love it this is our finished rondell that we mirrored with our Galena mirror now as I said we mirrored the side that had the ridges so that means that the Galena mirror is sitting in each one of those ridges and really creating a nice reflective quality this is something that I just don't think you can achieve any other way than Galena mirroring so as you saw it's a pretty straightforward process to do and a really good technique to have for these types of small irregular shapes so if you have any questions about this process about Galena mirroring or anything else that we covered today be sure to leave those in the comment box below we will leave a link to each of the kits that we use today as well as - monarch glass studios in the description below and be sure to subscribe to the channel so that you're notified of all of our future videos and check out our website AngelGilding.com thanks for stopping by [Music]