Tin Mirrors

[Dinora Rivera]

Good afternoon,

My name its Dinora and I have a only one question to ask to you nice guys,

I have seen, gold mirrors, copper mirrors, lead mirrors and in the old age mercury mirrors.
Could I make a tinn mirror? with stannous nitrate/chloride? I know about electroless tinn plating but I have never seen that method applied to glass

[Roderick Treece]

Hi Dora,
I have no idea if it can be done but I say go for it and let us know.

[Dinora Rivera]

Hi Dora,
I have no idea if it can be done but I say go for it and let us know.

I wil try, thanks, I was thinking to a experiment

first get tinn and mix it with nitric acid to make stannous II nitrate
then add Caustic Soda(Sodium hydroxide) and disolve it with ammonia(Ammonium hydroxide)

could a reducing sugar like lactose or Formalin reduce that complex to element tinn?... I'll try

[mgking]

Hi, Dinora.

The old mercury mirrors were in fact tin mirrors where the tin was dissolved in mercury to make a sticky shiny alloy which with mercury is called an "amalgam". This was pressed onto the glass surface with heavy weights for a long time until it stuck. Over time (like about a century or two), the tin oxidized to a white powder which no longer dissolved in the mercury so the mercury dripped out and ran down to the bottom of the mirror frame and the white powder was left as a rather nice antique mirror.

So it is possible to make a tin mirror using mercury.

Electroplating tin on glass is not so easy as glass does not conduct electricity. Electroless plating would be possible except tin is a powerful reducer and would need an even more powerful one to reduce it out of solution to plate on the glass. Even formalin is not that strong a reducer.

Many metals are being deposited on glass these days with vacuum deposition where you put the metal and the glass in a vacuum chamber and heat the metal until it evaporates and deposits on the glass. While this would probably work with tin, the resulting mirror would be even more sensitive to tarnishing than silver so protecting the back would be critical. It's also quite an expensive operation.

From a decorative point of view, silver and tin mirrors would look identical.

Mike

[Doug Bernhardt]

Don't know if you have access to Bruno Schweig's book but the various processes used to make mirrors is the subject and as a chemist/scientist he wrote it all down.....thank goodness. I have it but as a non-scientist (just a signtist)I found it heavy going although it's an invaluable asset if you want to or need to go deep.

[BruceJackson]

can anyone suggest some online resources for this type of reading?

I know the basic theory behind this process. I've spoken with guys that specialize in making mirror and they've given me some lay knowledge of the chemicals and methods, but the details of formulations has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

It would be good to understand it at a deeper level. Especially things such as adding other ingredients and some of the tricks to alter the appearance and get some of the antique effects.