Painting Advice Please

[BruceW]

I am taking on a painting job for a fellow collector and was wondering if anyone has attempted the same thing before and has any advice before I jump into the deep end.

 

This horn is a translucent red over silver.  I believe the silver is nickel plating but I have not tested it yet.  If it is I plan to strip what little remaining red paint off, polish the nickel and then repaint red over top again.   If it is not Nickel plating I can repaint the silver and then try the red.

The original red looks hand painted with streaks allowing the silver to shine through the thin areas.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Bruce

[Jerry]

The bright undercoat was usually just a tin plate and not nickel. That's why it degraded so easily. I believe that when the Smiths did their marvelous repaints of these horns, they stripped whatever original paint remained, then polished whatever was underneath, whether it be tin plate or just bare steel. They then sprayed the translucent "candy color" over the polished tin/bare metal. Again, I don't know this for a fact, but to me, that is how their repaints always looked.

 

My guess on how the original red finish was applied would be that it was simply dipped in the translucent paint/varnish and hung to dry, hence the streaks. Fast, easy & cheap.

Edited April 16 by Jerry

[phonogfp]

I repainted several flower horns back in the 1970s-80, and I found that due to the imperfections of the metal (from rust, dents, scratches, etc.), I achieved the best results by using a silver or gold undercoat for translucent finishes.  I usually used silver, but I recall trying gold with a red overspray and it looked nice.

 

George P.

[BruceW]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I stripped the horn down to the tin plating.  It needed some touch up due to scuffs and rust, which I cleaned up and then dusted with a silver spray paint.  Then finished with several thin coatings of Dupli-color Metalcast red anodized spray paint.  The very thin coatings allowed me to slowly build up the paint until it matched an existing red flowered horn I have in my collection. 

I showed the completed paint job to an old time collector in our area who immediately recognized the finished product as matching what he remembered from original Berliner horns which he had owned in the past.

 

Unfortunately, after all that work the owner (specifically his wife) wanted a more subdued and opaque red so I repainted it before adding the gold stripes.  But a "happy wife" means the phonograph will be allowed to display in his living room so compromises must be made once and awhile.

 

Bruce

[phonogfp]

Very nice, Bruce!  You did an excellent job of matching that original color.

 

George P.

[Jerry]

That is a fabulous job! 

 

Quote

It needed some touch up due to scuffs and rust, which I cleaned up and then dusted with a silver spray paint.

 

Did you dust the touch-up areas only with the silver, or did you dust the whole horn?

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 03:40 PM by Jerry

[CurtA]

That is a great result.  II have been planning to repaint an old horn with that same paint, so I'm glad to see the results.  "Happy wife" shouldn't apply in this case...

[MisterJive47]

Nice work! I love the result with the Duplicolor product.