Satin Silver Finish

[TexTuba]

Hello. I heard that on a satin silver finish if you polish it too much the finish becomes a polished one. My question is: Could you put some kind of clearcoat on the horn? Kind of like how they put clearcoats on cars. That way you could get fingerprints and what not off and STILL keep the finish. Just a thought..




Ralph

[ThomasDodd]

Silver plating can be protected with a coat of lacquer, but "why"? Silver plating is a protective/decorative coating for the base metal - as is clear lacquer. This sort of reminds me of "case covers"...and what next? a cover for the case cover?

silver tarnishes and needs polished, or you get a black horn. Clear coat it and no more tarnish, but you still hve the shiny silver color.

I'm thinking of coating my valve stems. I was sent silver plated by mistake, but at no extra charge. My horn isn't in a case 99% of the time, so the stems and mouthpiece tarnish. I can put the mouthpiece in a bag to protect it, yet still get to it quickly (on the odd chance I get 20 minutes practice). Not so easy to put up the valve stems, and they are a pain to clean

[MartyNeilan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Jupiter puts a coat of clear lacquer over the silver plate on their Artist line of saxophones. Looks great, until the silver starts to tarnish slightly after a couple years, and then you are stuck because you can't polish it.

[TexTuba]

Well what I was mainly saying is that it's a real chore to maintain that satin finish. But if you're not careful you will start to make the horn look polished. So if you had a protective coating you could clean it up and not have to worry about losing the satin finish.





Ralph

[rascaljim]

what about the effect of putting something else on the horn... could be a loss of resonation or a darkening or even brightening of the sound? I would think that would be a more important issue. I believe that we all agree that bare brass horns do play differently than lacqured horns.

Jim

[Rick Denney]

Hello. I heard that on a satin silver finish if you polish it too much the finish becomes a polished one.

It helps to understand how satin finishes are made.

The brass is buffed out, not to a high shine, but only to make it smooth. Then, it is sandblasted to create the satin finish. After that, it is plated.

The texture provided by the sandblasting is far deeper than the thickness of the silver. Thus, to remove the satin effect, you would first have to polish all the silver off the instrument.

You can fill up the satin texture with wax and polish materials that will make it seem shinier, but that is not the same thing as polishing off the satin.

I seem to recall that in the deep past, some satin silver finishes were made by satinizing a very thick plating of silver. This finish you could polish off without removing the silver, I suppose. It is true that older satin instrument had a much finer satin surface than modern satin instruments.

If you keep the instrument in a case when not in use, it will tarnish much more slowly. It's the change of air over the surface that promotes tarnish.

Rick "who refutes any audible effect of lacquer" Denney

[tubarnak]

Have you tried using lemon pledge to slow down the reaction?
Goes on clear and protects the metal. Works great on brass! I had a raw brass Alex BBb and I only needed to wipe it clean and "pledge" it a few times a year to keep the shine.
Probably does the same on silver...

Smelled fresh too!