Posted by Kenneth Sloan on December 09, 2003 at 10:44:08:
In Reply to: Re: Silverplater - any experience? posted by Chuck(G) on December 09, 2003 at 00:09:56:
The patches I'm thinking about touching up are all "worn away", I suppose. Most are very small, and appear to my eye to be due to either thin original plating or overenthusiastic buffing. But, the big one is a 2"x3" squarish patch on the inside of the bell - just about the size and shape of a mailing label. My uneducated guess is that the bell was damaged before the original sale and repaired. The silver disappeared on the very first chem-clean and polishing. The surface is perfectly smooth to the touch, and looks more like a stain on the silver than anything else (but, no...it's nice yellow brass shining through. The patch even has the look of someone taking a pencil eraser and scrubbing it back and forth in a raster pattern. Edges of the patch have small rounded features - again, looking like the path of a pencil eraser. [I suppose I really should put up a picture...please ask if this will affect your advice].
Anyway, I stumbled across a Caswell web page and noticed the bottle of "wipe it on and (slowly - I realize this) lay down a layer of silver". At $30, I figure it must be worth a try.
There's a similar "yellow stain" patch on the bottom bow - and a couple of "smaller than a dime" spots that look black (more like tarnish) rather than yellow. But, the main motivation is the "mailing label" feature on the interior of the bell. The good news is that, once replated, this area doesn't get a lot of handling or wear.