Special Types of Glass to Watch For?

[Bobbie Rochow]

Don't know if I titled this correctly or not, but the thought occured to me that maybe there are special circumstances we need to watch for, like tinted windows, or maybe something in the glass that may cause the gild to fail? Are old storefront windows the same as the newer ones?

I am just beginning to bid on glass jobs & I would like to know if there are things we need to know about types of glass, etc. What if a customer asks to have his window gilded & it is tinted? Would I offer to surface gild the outside? I sure hope that is not a stupid question, never gave it a thought til the other day.

Edited to add...I have done some searches & I did find out about moisture & heat ruining the gild if there is not proper ventilation.

[Mike Jackson]

Bobbie,
About half your question can be answered at your end by simply taping a piece of white paper up on the inside of the glass and walking around to the other side. If the paper isn't very visible (tinted glass), then nothing you paint or gild on the inside is going to show up either. You can also see if the glass has the heavy green cast.

When doing smaller glass work for yourself, you have the luxury of picking the non-tin side of the glass by using a blacklight. On an existing storefront or door, you pretty much get what you get and just have to do the best you can. (and that is assuming the tin side causes any problems in the first place).

On quite a few occasions, we were able to convince the client it would be cheaper for us to have a brand new piece of glass in our studio than add in all the extra labor and out of the studio time doing a complicated project on location. He'd have a glass company measure and cut the glass, bring it to us and then install it after we were through. That is even easier to pull off if the old glass is scratched, tinted, or could be upgraded to newer, more energy efficient thermal glass.

When we operated our big shop, it was very difficult and expensive for us to be out of the shop that many hours, so we didn't sell too many of the designer projects on location.

Good luck,
M. Jackson

[Bobbie Rochow]

Thank you very much Mike, that is all VERY helpful. I guess I need to purchase a blacklite! I appreciate your help.

I have been doing searches on this site for different subjects & printing much of what I am finding. I will try to ask for only what I cannot find.

[Mike Jackson]

Bobbie,
I am not so positive the black lite tool is that important. Let me explain....

Back when Rick Glawson was doing his Angel Gilding, he seemed to have problems on "occasions". That made him try to figure out why. At one point, he learned of the glass making process and how a thin layer or tin (I believe that is the substance) is permanently left on one side during the manufacturing process. The black light would show you which side the tin was on. So, for quite a while, Rick explained this issue to everyone and we all bought a black light. Then, we'd go back to a Conclave a year or two later and he wasn't using the light as much or not at all. If we asked him why, he'd explain that the tin wasn't really the problem all along, it was......something else, like maybe the type of tinning solution he had been using or differences in the manufacturing of something else. In the end, I seem to remember him saying that wasn't really the problem and not something to worry about. Even after hearing that, we always took the extra step on our in-house glass pieces and worked on the non-tin side, just in case. Again, on an installed window or door, you don't have any control either way.

This "could" also be an issue on beveled glass. Once it is beveled, you don't have a choice of which side to use...only the choice of whether to use it at all. We purchased a pretty good supply of cheap beveled glass in common sizes like 5x7, 8x10 and some odd size like 10x14. We used them for test projects, glass Christmas cards, and so forth. When we checked the glass with the black light, I recall that almost 100% of them were beveled on the tin side, leaving us with the clear side to work on. If you are having glass beveled, and if you still think the tin is an issue, you might to go to the glass company with a black light and mark the side you want them to bevel.

If anyone else wants to add or adjust my Rick story above, please feel to straight out the story, or confirm it.

Cheers,
Mike Jackson

[Bobbie Rochow]

Thank you, that explains a lot.

I picked up a wonderful piece of glass form my small town hardware store, maybe the size of an old door transom, & I wanted to gild it & do something special on it. I can see the glass is very old, it has slight crease lines in it. I guess I ought to avoid trying to chip it, since it is not thick glass? Unless maybe a small portion of letters?

I also picked up a frame with a batten(?) holding a total of about 12 small windows in it. Pretty old looking. I think it would be awesome to complete the whole thing with reverse painting & use it as a wall piece.

So much I can do & want to do..so little time to do it!

[Kent Smith]

Perhaps Sarah should address the whole tin situation but I have rarely had a problem and only with angel gilding. Rick felt it was not the problem as he refined the process.

As to leaf gilding, tin should not cause any problems. Clouds, beading of size and adhesion issues are usually more an issue of cleaning odd contaminates from the glass.

The ideal glass for gold is the low iron glass like Starlight but having that for anything but special projects is rare. I coped with some 3/4" thick glass walls last week that were too green for my taste so I increased the matte size and used as rich a gold as I could so it would not look too green as well.

[Bobbie Rochow]

I have to ask this...what do you mean by green? You mean when the glass is thick enough that it has that greenish color to it, like when you look from the side of the edge?

[Mike Jackson]

Bobbie,
In almost all the new westerns, you can see the old glass being used. I seem to recall it being called "float" glass. It is not perfectly smooth and gives some interesting effects with the sherrif sitting inside and you see the slightly distorted views outside. You can see it in the new movie "Appaloosa" and also in "Open Range", just to name two.

Yes, they are talking about the greenish looking glass available at almost all glass shops. The thicker the glass, the more it can affect the lettering on the reverse side as Kent was mentioning. Again, just hold a piece of white paper inside and look at it on the outside.

Mike Jackson

[Larry White]

There are a few architectural salvage companies in my area that I go scrounging at. I pick up some of these "old glass" windows and remove the glass...which is methodically tricky to remove from the glazed wood frame...but not impossible. The old glass is quite fragile. Most all of it I have seen is 1/8" thick (double strength).



If you ever want to do an antique replica, they look really, really nice on the old glass. I bought an antique oval frame off ebay and it came with the old rippley glass in it. I did a Tom Moore Cigars sign on it and it came out really nice. Half the interest in it is the movement of the wobby reflection you see in it as you pass by. I've got a few pieces of old glass waiting in the wings for when the inspiration strikes...if it strikes.

I stopped by one of these stores when I was out in Modesto...didn't find any old glass, truth be told, but I did find a miniature ore cart for the gold mine...just lucky I guess.



-Aho!

[Kelly Thorson]

Hey Larry,

The shadow of the sunrise on my living room wall this morning reminded me of reading your post.
All the original windows in our house have a lot of ripple in the glass surface. I remember my kids kneeling on the couch and bobbing their heads from side to side because they liked the way it distorted things and made them dizzy as they moved. From straight on everything is normal, but they really have a lot of texture to them. Jim wants to replace them all for new energy efficient ones but I love the character.
I've always wondered if they used salvaged glass for them - most of the lumber in our house (built in the 50's I believe) was salvaged. There is lot of old glass like this in abandoned homesteads, although vandals have broken most everything that was not covered over.

[Sarah King]

Float glass was invented by Pilkington in 1959 and it is perfectly flat without any distortion. Any window glass made before that was made by the cylinder process - machine blown cylinders about 40 feet tall and 2 feet across that were slit open and reheated to flatten them. They all have some distortion and if your window glass is wavy you know that it is at least 48 years old. I just love old window glass and use it for antique mirrors and especially stained glass repairs. I scanned and posted pictures of the cylinder process - and the polished plate process - from a Pittsburgh Plate Glass book from 1923 on my other website at http://www.stainedglassltd.com/newsite/ ... wglass.php

Only float glass has a "tin" side and not all modern glass is float glass. Even today you can get drawn glass, rolled glass and hand blown glass. I don't know if Starfire or Diamante (low iron, super clear, "white") glass is float or not. I need to look that up.

I personally don't think that it makes any difference whether you Angel Gild on the tin side or not. I think Rick had more problems with his tinning than just about anything else. But there are many small things that go into having problems so who knows.

[Larry White]

That Tom Moore sign above, is Angel Gilded. ...why spend two days on something you can do in an hour...

Only way to handle it!

[erik winkler]

Because Dave Smith told me Angel Gilding costs a lot to set up...?

[Sarah King]

We get this question fairly often so I put together a comparison chart at http://www.angelgilding.com/Angel_Gildi ... _Leaf.html with the help of Robert Frese at Chicagold Signs. Nobody knows more about this issue than the folks that read this forum - love to know what you think.

[erik winkler]

I like those stats....
I love the Silvering method. Got all the chemicals, took ages by the way to get the right stuff for the right price.
But when we did it at the workshop I noticed that there was a lot of liquid wasted in bottle 1 and bottle to with the two silvering mixtures.
Thinking about the gold it scares me a bit.

So Sarah, here is the thing:
I am absolutely interested, but i never saw it done, only saw the beautiful results, how do i do it?
I am absolutely interested, but i am afraid that i will fail doing the process and waist a lot of expensive chemicals.
I am absolutely interested, but i think shipping to Nederland (Europe) will cause a problem, due to American custom policies after 9/11; I had this with a order i placed at the Letterhead signsupply...
I am absolutely interested, but how much of the angel gilding ingredients will i have to buy initially to begin gilding a small glass panel like the one shown above? How many US dollars?

[Sarah King]

Silvering is just the same as Angel Gilding except that the silver deposits faster - 5 minutes for silver and 20 - 45 minutes for gold depending on how warm your shop is.

I'm not sure what you mean about the wasted liquid. If you mean the liquid that poured off the glass after you silvered it - that was just water and other chemicals with most of the silver already on the glass. Otherwise it would depend on how you are mixing and applying the silver - what technique were you using?

If you've never seen it done, we have a DVD - Creating a Mirror on Glass: Silver & Gold - for $19.95 US plus shipping ($9.00 to the Netherlands I think)

You probably will waste some chemicals but I bet you wasted some leaf when you were learning to leaf gild. It is, unfortunately, the way of the world.

We ship chemicals to Europe about once a month. We send them by the US Postal Service without any probelms. You might need to pay customs and/or sales tax at your end - I don't know what the Dutch regulations are but your post office could tell you. We can accept payment through Paypal or by credit card over the phone. To order through our website, you need to have any American or Canadian address.

Our basic Angel Gilding Kit costs $135.50 plus about $30.00 shipping to The Netherlands. It has enough gold to cover 8 square feet of glass in a single gild and it includes silver to back the gold. If your shop is not set up for silvering you might also want a Sheet Glass Mirroring Kit. You can downolad all of our illustrated instructions for free on our website to see what you need.

Glad you liked the stats ....... Thanks!

[erik winkler]

Ok I will go for it.
Lets start to learn the technique from your DVD(s)
Could you send me a private message with the invoice for the DVD(s) etc?
Thanks,