Antique Clock Restoration - The Complete Job - Part 6, Restoring the Dial.

Hello, and welcome back to part 6 of the series on restoring the antique bracket clock. In this episode I'm dealing with the dial, and as you can see here, it's in a little bit of a state. A previous restoration attempt has seen this dial polished, which is not something that you typically see on this type of dial, and then silver-plated, which again is not a surface finish that is normally used in horology. Certainly not on a dial, anyway. To redeem the dial, I started by testing the thickness of the plating by using some wet and dry paper on a wooden block. I just started to work the surface and see how much work it needed to get through the plating and start touching the surface of the brass. As you can see, the surface of the brass is just starting to show through, so it's not going to take too much work to get through the plating. I didn't want to deform the dial whilst working on it, so I put it onto this foam block to help support it. Then it was down to the hard work. This was wet and dry paper used dry on a wooden block to remove the silver finish. I didn't want to touch the brass too much. I was taking care to stop as soon as I hit the brass, because I didn't want to take any more life out of the engraving. The previous restoration had been very invasive to the engraving. It seemed that they had taken quite a layer off and made the engraving a little bit thin, and I didn't want to add to that. So I was careful to just remove the silvering and then as little part of the brass as possible afterwards. A little bit of a wipe down to degrease, and then it's over to start correcting the waxing of the numerals. Sometimes it's necessary to completely remove the wax and start again, as it will react and bubble with fresh wax and won't look good. But after doing a little bit of a test, I found that it mixed quite well with the wax that I was using. So I was able to just refill on top of the existing wax. Again, this saved an invasive step on the dial. I would always try to minimise my levels of intervention. So I'm topping up the wax, as you can see here. I'm just warming up the dial plate and then melting the wax stick directly onto the plate. It's impossible to not get wax over the edges of the engraving, but it's a good idea to try and minimise it. As you can see, I'm following the lines of the engraving. I'm not getting it absolutely everywhere. Because that will save work later, as all of the wax will have to be removed from the surface. So with the dial waxed, it's over to the next stage, which is wet and dry paper, this time with water, on a wooden block. Again, supporting the dial on the foam block. I'm working the wet and dry paper, and I'm just cutting the surface of the wax. I'm trying not to actually remove brass. As I said earlier, I don't want to make the engraving any more shallow than it already is. It's impossible to not touch the brass to a certain extent, especially when putting the final straight grain on, which would be the last step. But I'm trying to concentrate my efforts on the wax itself. So with the overspill of the wax removed and the dial straight grained and then degreased, I just warmed it up gently with a hot air gun to liven up the wax and to give it a glossy finish. A good wash, and it's over to start the process of silvering the dial. To silver the dial, I'm using a silver paste, which is a silver nitrate solution. This is reacting with the brass and applying a very thin layer of silver to the surface. This is the traditional method. This is how most lock dials that you're used to seeing a silvered finish on are actually silvered. Some are solid silver, obviously, but that obviously is entirely different. Actually, plating in silver like this was when it came in is not the method that is normally used. It's this method of a very fine, thin layer of silver applied by hand like this. That is the traditional way of silvering a lock dial. You can see, even in this shot, the camera is picking up the difference between the brass tone of the plain brass and then the silvered tone to the left-hand side of the dial. You can actually see the silvering reaction occur in real time. I like to go over it a few times just to make sure that I've got a good layer of silver and that it's all nice and even. And there we've got the silvered dial. A very important stage in between the silvering stage and this stage you're watching now is to make sure that you give it a really good wash and get rid of all of the old silvering powder so that the reaction can stop. If there's any leftover silver nitrates sloshing around the back of the dial or anything, then it can cause brown spotting later. This stage is neutralising the silvering reaction and livening up the surface of the silver and blending the silvering together. It's cream of tartar is the powder that you can see me using. It's cooking-grade cream of tartar. As I say, it blends the silvered finish and livens it up to a lovely, sharp, white silvered finish. So another really good wash of the dial and make sure it's really dry and then it's a few wipes of some clear lacquer to finish. And that's the dial restored. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you on the next episode.