Wonderful Patrick! Thanks so much for asking Chris Daniel for us. Now we know what the large blue & gold faces are made out of and my suspicions have been confirmed. The paint material that Chris described to you is called "Powder Coat" It makes sense for two reasons: There are only two colors used (powder coats usually only have one or two colors because of the difficulty in masking), and the dial faces are so large (large ovens are needed and large porcelain kilns are rare.)
>From what I have learned in my investigations, powder coats are the second best paint, after porcelain as far as durability. And powder coating is a lot less expensive. Since it is applied electrostaticly, it can only be applied to metal that conducts electricity. I bet that a lot of the blue & gold and black & gold clock faces I saw were done the same way with powder coat. Now this raises one more important question. Note that the hour lines and the numerals are shiny gold on a blue background. The blue color is certainly baked on powder coat enamel. But what is the gold color? Is the gold color gold leaf that was applied by hand on top of the powder coat blue background, or is the gold color also powder coat? If you talk to Chris again, could you ask him? John p.s. this question is important because if the gold color is powder coat, it would probably double the cost because each color requires a separate baking in the oven and a different stencil. You can not bake on two colors at the same time. Also, gold powder coat paint probably is not as shiny as gold leaf. As we discussed, it is hard to have very large kiln-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Powers Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 12:58 PM To: 'Sundial List' Subject: RE: Porcelain Sundials Message text written by Patrick Powers >I shall ask Chris Daniel (who is not a member of this list as far as I know) about what he thinks the finish was on St Margaret's.< Well, I did ask Chris Daniel about the St Margaret of Antioch dials and he confirms that they were stove-enamelled - like my Morris Cowley mudguards and not vitreously enamelled. This stove enamelling process gives a more flexible finish but the colour is a fired paint and is not made from fused glass particles and the paint is sprayed on using electrostatic attraction to give better adhesion so, (as far as I understand things), you cannot easily generate designs on the metal by this technique. However, as we see from St Margaret's, you can then apply size and then gold or platinum leaf to the stove enamelled surface to provide necessary dial furniture. Hmmm, I suppose that it might be possible to use masks and layers of different colours and multiple firings to achieve a desired design because my muguards had a grey undercoat as well as a later fired black top coat and they didn't merge!. Might be worth considering when big dials are involved - after all the St Margaret's dials are still going strong after 25 years - not bad for any dial finish. Patrick --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
