How To Clean An Antique Painted Clock Dial

Keeping to topic. some shots of an english-dial dial. Quite late, probably 1900 +-. The face is ingrained with heavy filth: smoke from a pub. The clock was scrapped, and I was given the dial. It had been hanging for years with no glass.
fraser dial.jpg

I tried some molar past on it today, with no effect. I don't have any silvery wadding at the moment) Someone else tried a heavy scourer down near the 6 and 7, but it was effecting the minute circles. (that is why I was given the dial: the motion and case went elsewhere <tardily 70s>)
harsh clean.JPG

Y'all can see the original colour where the dial has been chipped: it was pure white, though I uncertainty it could be got back to that, without harming the numerals.
white under surface.jpg

This moving picture shows the area which was covered by a bezel, and has aged "gracefully".

bezel tidemark.JPG

Thyme, not wanting to boast, but since yous have asked for creative proof, I prove a pictorial example of my piece of work. I had hopped to accept a shot of a spare moon dial, I did twenty odd years ago, simply the flagman back in Eire, tin't detect it. And so I evidence the but oil painting I ever did.

My normal medium for drawing/painting is cartoons, which are then watercolour tinted. Peter Archer (75 years) 1 of the worlds leading military artists (google) who is a neighbor, asked me to accept function in a spoof art show back in 2006: he asked me to show some cartoons and an oil. I had never painted in oil on canvass before: quite a fleck different than what is needed on dials and moon calendars. The horses feet are a disaster!

Whatsoever way, enough of that: back to topic. Cleaning of silvered dials, depends on the quality of the varnish. The old antique brass dials on LC clocks, were coated with white of egg: say no more!

The victorian dials used a more or less experimental varnishes and lacquers. I say experimental, as virtually of them tended to fail after merely a few years, and so the makers were ever trying out a new receipt. After 1923, when cellulose lacquer was invented, the problem was thought to have Been solved. Withal, every bit nosotros all know at present: that was not the case.

With the weaker varnishes, the problem is that cleaning will more than or less remove part or all of the coating, eventually. This is a gradual process, and leads to the silver, discolouring in patches. Removing the varnish, poses bug with the numerals: some are printed and non embossed/painted/waxed. Re-silvering is a relative like shooting fish in a barrel procedure, but repainting arabic numerals is the big problem. Almost of the very late dials were electroplated, but a lot of the 19th c dials were done in the quondam mode, which merely deposited a very thin film of silver: so sparse, that in most cases, it cannot be polished upward.

Generally speaking, most dials go dirty with general household pollution: cigar/cigarette fume, fireplace smoke etc. This can be cleaned with fairly good results. The problem with the very late clocks with cellulose, is that the cellulose itself discolours, and rarely can exist "cleared". I say "cleared", as it isn't a cleaning surface dirt problem, just a problem with decomposable lacquer, losing its translucency. Anyone who has had to restore 1930s-50s piece of furniture volition know: as soon as the C lacquer is off, y'all suddenly tin see the wood.

The various victorian varnishes, skin off or disintegrate, and in most cases can be removed relatively easily.