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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2008
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    Colorado, Westminster
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    Country: United States

    Default Antique Safe Question- Paint

    Does anyone know the types of paintes used on safes in the 1870-1910's.

    Base color type paint?
    Pin Striping Paint?
    Gold paint used around borders of pictures?
    Same types or different?

    Also anyone know how some of the pictures were put on safes? I can tell the hand painted ones, but some the pictures looks almost like a water decal..?

    Any help would be greatly appriciated.

    Thanks

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
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    Devon UK
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    Country: UK

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    Transfers were very popular and incidentally, I bought a large partners desk from a printing firm who are still going today and used to make the transfers for Perry safes

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
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    84
    Country: United States

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    Brandon,
    Talk to Bob Stabley at L.A. Safe and Vault. I have seen his guy paint pictures on safes he is restoring and it is amazing. He can paint a gold medallion on a safe and it actually feels like a gold coin has been mounted to the safe. It is incredible what he can do.
    Jacob

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Seattle WA
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    Transfers and paint were the two big things to mark safes that I have seen. Gold leaf was also big on high end safes. Not any more I am sorry to say. As to the type of paint I would have to guess lead base or oil base, something along those lines. If I was wanting to make a safe look so nice I would lean to gold leaf. There are sites and books that show you how to do this. Find a picture of your safe or one by the same manufacture and use that as a guide.

  5. #5
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    Sep 2004
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    Devon UK
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    It could be different in the US but I would beg to differ. I have done a bit of goldleafing in my time. Gold leaf was not used in the UK and would be less effective on a safe than paint I think. Gold paint can be ordinary paint coloured gold or paint with gold in it though.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
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    Devon UK
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    PS I understand that gold and mercury were used in an evaporative process to gold-up the safe plates over here. For some reason health and safety put the mockers on mercury vapour wafting around a factory in the end...

  7. #7
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    Mercury was baned from allmost everything in the west. Heck you just need to touch it to have it absorbe into the skin and once in the system there is no way to get it out. :-(

    As for the gold leaf I know I have seen two really nice safes with what look like gold leaf as paint would have left a thicker detail when you run a finger over them. Maybe I am wrong but it sure looked like gold leaf. My mother did some gold leaf work on a few things. I don't have the hand to do that type of work.
    Last edited by Dean Nickel; 13-01-10 at 04:57 AM.

  8. #8
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    Gold is very high in the periodic table which is why things dont corrode it. Mercury is higher though. Put a gold ring touching a pool of mercury from a thermometer and the gold visibly corrodes as you watch. Even after you take it out and wipe it off it still seems to keep corroding-quick way to really annoy the by wife trying this out at home!!!!
    The stuff just drips out of the rock in the mines-killing the miners before they reach 25 years old.

  9. #9
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    Yes this is true. But there is one property that Mercury has that is useful outside in switches and thermometers. If you take some Mercury and put it in a copper gold pan that has fine gold in it you move it around and it will collect the gold. Now once this is done you tort (distill) the Mercury in a SEALED still and you are left with gold that is free from everything that was in that gold pan. Only a person that knows what they are doing should try this. This will discolor the gold until it is heated or buffed. I have done a bit of gold prospecting.

    That brings me back to the point I was going to make in relation to the safes. If you are working with the paint on safes be sure to wet sand if you are sanding and if you strip the paint I would treat it as Hazardous waste. Wear a respirator mask with filters, not just a dust mask. You get that stuff in your lungs and you WILL have problems. Don't let the paint dust get dry before you contain it in some waste bag. If the safe was made in the last 30 years I wouldn't worry as much.
    Last edited by Dean Nickel; 13-01-10 at 04:56 AM.

  10. #10
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    I have seen an old maritime lighthouse where the entire lens system that revolves around the light (several tonnes) was floating on mercury. It turned real smooth. In Britain now it is illegal to sell antique barometers because they contain mercury

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