Magnifying Mirrors

[Kelly Thorson]

Me again! I have an old shaving mirror to resilver that has a magnifying mirror on one side. Is the magnifying effect only due to the curvature of the glass? Is there anything I need to know before attempting this?

[Doug Bernhardt]

I do beleive you have it right and....silver is just silver. Everything else must be optics.

[Kelly Thorson]

Can't stand lonely posts either Doug?
Thanks for answering. I guess that was very vaguely put. The reason I asked was that when I took the mirror apart the side that was not magnified had a much thicker layer of silver on it. The convex side that was mirrored had a different backing and the mirroring was much thinner and the backup paint had a lot of brush strokes in it. It was also much shinier that the backup on the other side. It just seeemed curious, but I suspect maybe the curved glass was sprayed and the other poured.
I suspected the magnifying was just to do with the curvature seeing as how a spoon will magnify or shrink depending on which side you look into. When no one jumped in and said otherwise I figured that must be the case. I still haven't done anything with it. Too many other irons in the fire right now, that night I happpened to be stormstayed at my shop, so I was playing.