Remove mirroring?

[Lars Wacherhausen]

Is it possible to take a mirror and remove some of the 'mirror' without sandblasting it so its just pure clean glass again? A chemical process or something?

I ask because I have a mirror were I want to remove some some of the effect for letters in gold?

Hope you understand my english

-Lars

[Roderick Treece]

Lars,
Your english is great. I wish mine was that good.

The answer to your question as far as I know is YES but, and I don't think your going to like the but part. After alot of experimenting I have come up with a way to strip the backing off a mirror right up to a mask BUT, The mask is very,very expensive and right now is only 2" wide for plotter cutting. It comes up to 36" wide but can only but cut by hand.I am working with a lab right now to see if we can develop wider material that can be cut on a plotter.
The stripper I came up with works great but you can't paint it on in a very clean design without a mask.

Right now just make your design based on using a sandblasted outline with a clear center for water gilding. If your going to oil gild it doesn't matter.

Roderick

[Lars Wacherhausen]

I can teach you some english if you teach me to be a killer sign painter

Can I use any paint stripper? I heart that use of nitric acid is the best way?

[Roderick Treece]

Stripping a mirror takes two types of stripper.

Paint stripper
Any type works but it depends on how long it takes to work and how toxic it is.

Copper / silver strip
To remover those metals.

I'll teach you if you come here and work for free.

[Lars Wacherhausen]

If i was living in USA, I would be there in a minute.

There arent any sign painters in Denmark left. The trade is under a new name now and its all about foil and print, no gold, no paint, no handcraft, all computer

[Sarah King]

You can use any kind of paint stripper to remove the backing paint from a mirror. As Roderick says, it is difficult to remove it to a clean line. The best thing might be to remove all of the paint, clean the silver carefully with acetone and then repaint the silver you want to keep. Once the new paint is dry you can use silver remover (or copper remover if the mirror has a copper back). The paint will act as a mask for the silver (or copper) remover so that you end up with a sharp clean line between the silver and the clear glass. We have instructions on our website at http://angelgilding.com/AGAntique_an_Ex ... irror.html and we certainly could ship the supplies to you in Denmark.