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
