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Brilliant cut glass and obscuring

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

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DAVE SMITH
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Brilliant cut glass and obscuring

Post by DAVE SMITH »

I have been wanting to post some photo's of Stuart Norton's cut glass work for the past month. Stuart as been helping me for the past couple of years in learning this craft . I wanted to involve brilliant cutting into my own glass work .Stuart's knowledge and skill on this lost art is outstanding ,he has helped me to over come some of the tricks involved in this wonderful craft. I thought it would be good to share some photo's of his work with you in the States and beyond.
Stuart has been cutting glass for 40 years he told me his apprentiship was 5yrs served, he trained under two older gentlemen which had 100yrs between them of brilliant cutting skills. He hand obscures his cutting after polishishing for some panels and other panels will be made into elaborate mirrors .His process for silvering is spray silvering then copper backing and finally mirror backing paint . He is helped in his daily work by his two sons Steven and Simon Norton.

Stuart lives in Newcastle, England
His website is www.glass-and-sign.com

Dave

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vance galliher
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brilliant glass post

Post by vance galliher »

thank you so much David for posting this wonderful site !
Roderick Treece
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Post by Roderick Treece »

Dave,
Thanks for that post.I wonder if he's looking to adopt any 50 years?Incredeble work!

Roderick

www.customglasssigns.com
Patrick Mackle
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Post by Patrick Mackle »

Over the top Dave!!
Man I'm SO stoked! I've been doing some cutting in my too little spare time and looking into acquiring or making some of those larger flywheel stone wheels. Stuart has a great site. The only thing I miss is the sound byte of the glass against the wheel. Tell him how impressed this ol' yank
was of his work. Would love to hear any stories or legends of any old cutters in the past.
Pat
Jim Moser
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Post by Jim Moser »

Awesome work ! Really great website too ! Very informative. Thanks for posting it.
Life is much too important to be taken seriously
Doug Bernhardt
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Post by Doug Bernhardt »

Smitty, I also love how much the traditional techniques are used. In particular how he does a mirror with gold letters and an outline only...as in the liquor pieces. I saw quite a few done this way when I was over your way these past few years and now finally you might be able to explain how this was done.
DAVE SMITH
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Post by DAVE SMITH »

Hi Doug. Glad to see your back from Paris mate.

The gold letters you see as you no are brilliant cut.
Stuart would have cut and then polished the letters and outline them with black enamel paint then he would have water gilded them and finally backed them up from the chemical silver which he sprays over the the entire panel upright creating a mirror finally copper backing and painting.

The 2nd way to acheive this would be to gild the cuts first then paint over the top taking care of all your edges and corners letting the paint dry then removing the excess gold with Bonami Cake or a jewellers brush
or traditionally over here a coarse nylon stocking slightly dampened.
Then ready for your 1/4 inch black signwritten outline of black enamel. Over here in England and I would imagine it to be the same in Canada and the USA alot of the slot machines you see were firstly screen printed in say 10 different colours then the clear areas left would be silvered into mirror The type of paint used would need to withstand the strong chemicals for making the mirror effect.

I shots might work but would probably need to harden on the glass for a week or so. Worth experimenting with I need to ask Stuart what he uses.
I will come back and let you no.

The 3rd way.

When I was being taught how to silver glass by an old gentleman called Bernard Harris I asked if I could silver over vinyl ,he said that's the way he had been making his pub mirrors for the last 40 yrs. Sign companies would bring there masked out mirrors to him for silvering .
I now silver over the vinyl 3 coats then apply mirror backing paint over the entire area and strip out the letters leaving really crisp sharp edges.
I make the tin solution a bit stronger which helps when removing the vinyl
from the glass to prevent ripping into the bright lines. Because the type of paint I use it tends to dry quick leaving a bridge between the vinyl letter and the background. The strengthening of the (tin) Stannous Chloride as now eliminated this problem.

Larry White now uses this method for his silvering on some of his elaboratley chipped signs, but I think he uses Asphaltum for backing his mirrors , which he has had good success with.

I had a call over the weekend to meet up with an Antique dealer He deals in Old Advertising he had a mirror for me to restore, from the look of some of the work breaking down the silver areas were falling away in folds which got me thinking it was done by some sort of masking of the letters then silvering the entire sign afterwards. The sign is about 90 yrs old I will post it up in the next few days.



I suspect there is other ways to all this (Pat mackle) could probably tell us more.


Hope this helps Doug.
Dave[/quote]
Doug Bernhardt
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Post by Doug Bernhardt »

Smitty.....Paris was amazing and the countryside beautiful beyond anything I was ready for. More on this later but a quick aside...as you can imagine I shot lots of foto's although they(signwriting) don't compare with the work in England. and So...that's how they did this work. It always amazes me how much there is to learn in this business...especially the glass work. I've been at this for way longer than I'd like to admit and I always did some head scratching over the English bar mirrors. I'm going to try this on a job coming up in the next couple of months.
DAVE SMITH
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Post by DAVE SMITH »

Look forward to seeing what you come up with Doug.
Did you manage to get lost down any side streets in Paris where you find all the reverse glass work?
I remember my wife and I went to Paris on our honeymoon we did all the site seeing tours Euro Disney etc. Most of the photo's I took were of signs.We went down one side street and I came across an old bakery ,it must have been 30'feet wide with high glass curved windows all built within mahogony surrounds the glass was covered in glue chipping and brilliant cutting with some 3 toned acid and lots of small reverse painted pictorials all depicting scenes of french countryside and food. I did n't have a digital camera at the time just an ordinary kodak camera the one where the picture comes out the front 2 minutes later. The picture came out well I wish I had it to show you. I remember giving it to Rick that year to see what he thought of it and who made it. He said he was certain the work was done by an English Co at the turn of the century the name he gave me was( Cake Bread Robey) Would like to find out some more on them.I no where the bakery is so next time I 'm in Normandy which will be April I will get some new pics for you .

Dave
Doug Bernhardt
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Post by Doug Bernhardt »

Dave...we did try and get lost in some alleys but saw nothing as wonderful as you describe. Back to the glass pieces (Stuarts)....I am still wondering about a back-up that is tough enuf to put up with the cleaning etc in advance of silvering..."he says scratching his head some more!"
Jim Moser
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Post by Jim Moser »

For what it's worth, I did a back bar mirror for Jack Custeau in San Diego several years ago. The mirror shop that did the silvering suggested that we back up the gold and all the artwork with asphaltum. Everything was done by hand (no screen printing) so I had to double coat most of it. Kind of a pain, but it turned out nice.

As an aside the man who did the silvering was one of the original kids in the Our Gang movies. Never did find out which one.
Life is much too important to be taken seriously
Roderick Treece
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Post by Roderick Treece »

Jim,
Nice to see your name come up.The little raskle was Joe Seawell and unfortunatly for me he just retired.His mom was a movie extra as well.He wouldn't teach me how to mirror either.So Now I might be the only mirroring guy in San Deigo.We are doing all of our own mirroring and antique mirroring.

Roderick
www.customglasssigns.com
Roderick Treece
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Post by Roderick Treece »

Jim,
Nice to see your name come up.The little raskle was Joe Seawell and unfortunatly for me he just retired.His mom was a movie extra as well.He wouldn't teach me how to mirror either.So Now I might be the only mirroring guy in San Deigo.We are doing all of our own mirroring and antique mirroring.

Roderick
www.customglasssigns.com
Keith Pettit
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Post by Keith Pettit »

Hi Dave,
Would you mind elaborating a little more on spraying the mirror, do you actually spray on the solution rather than pour? or have I got the wrong end of the stick.
Cheers!
Regards,
Keith
Mike Jackson
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Post by Mike Jackson »

Keith,

Go to:
http://www.theletterheads.com/glawson/anggildinst.html

Near the top of that page, you will see three little video clips of Rick Glawson working with Angel Gilding and Silvering. He sprays one and pours one.

If you do a search on the Internet for Mirror Silvering, you'll turn up quite a few sites that have silvering kits and equipment for large scale spraying. I'm sure Sarah King can sell you the large spray gun equipment if you need it, too, but you really need an exhaust system and special facilities to go that route. Rick used small Prevail spray cans for small areas.

Mike Jackson
Mike Jackson / co-administrator
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DAVE SMITH
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Post by DAVE SMITH »

Hi Keith.
I pour on the solution silver rather than spray, like Mike as stated you need an extracting system for spray silvering,You don'nt want to be breathing this stuff in (Not nice stuff!) . You also need a good silvering gun and set up for the silver solutions to run down into your gun. The gun is made up of either two or three compartments as the solutions fill the compartments and the trigger is pressed the solutions are sprayed together sometimes in midair or actually mixed in the gun creating the start of the reaction between the different chemicals . I mix enough raw chemicals for the area of glass to be silvered then after cleaning I pour on my working solution ,you can slow the reaction down if needed.When silvering in high temperatures the reaction of depositing is down to seconds so more water is needed . In cold weather I still use the mix with water but with smaller amounts You can also change the chemical balance to slow or speed things up by means of altering the ammonia solution. I also try and bring the room up to a good temprature . Spraying the silver with a gun is probably quicker but maybe wasteful as you are always spraying the silver coat and waiting for it to deposit upright hence more fluid needed,but the reaction time is still very quick on depositing .By pouring you can easily work out your amounts needed for the glass area, this is done with test runs of tap water after the cleaning stage. The method of spray silvering would work better for curved objects such as slumped bent glass like you see around our towns .If you need ever to purchase spray equipment for this process Stuart Norton who I talked about earlier purchased his equipment from Peacock Laboratries in the States worth looking at there website along with Sarah Kings to find out more.There is no difference in the finished coat of silver between the two methods used here.
Dave
Sarah King
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Post by Sarah King »

Hey Dave,

Thanks for the plug!! I don't stock the spray guns but I do live just up the road from Paasche Headquarters and I would be glad to arrange shipping etc for anyone who is interested - more in the hopes of selling the silver than making much on the guns. Paasche has excellent equipment. You would need one gun for the tin and one of their dual nozzle spray guns for the silver. You can, of course, spray with the glass flat on the bench - you don't have to have it vertical.

I've talked to a number of guys who silver and, as far as I can see, the guys who spray can't see why you would pour and vice versa. I've tried spraying and the learning curve is about the same as pouring - neither method is easier than the other. The guns are expensive - which is the main reason I vote for pouring. The results depend on the operator more than the equipment - no real magic bullet here (haha)
Sarah King
AngelGilding.com
DAVE SMITH
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Post by DAVE SMITH »

Doug,
Sorry I missed your post on the question about the correct Black paint to use on silvering mirrors. I spoke with Stuart today and asked him what he uses. He said in the past he had used a fast drying enamel which you could only spray on, he also said black humbrol enamels(craft paint) could work well for silvering over. Would be worth trying 1 shot out and letting it cure hard for a week or so before cleaning etc. I called a company today who make paints for glass .the paint they supply is twopack and brushable and is designed for silvering over.I am sitting in the house at the moment wireless so all my details on this are in the studio. I will place them here tommorow for you.

Dave
Roderick Treece
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Post by Roderick Treece »

Hi there,
I recently visited The shop of Barry at Decorative glass in Van Nuys calif.He cleans,mirrors and antiques his glass all in the same place laying flat.Works good for him.He sparys.

Roderick
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