N_Cook said:
To silver part of a standard mercury discharge lamp for use as a video
projector bulb, presumably less screen illumination , but 15 foot diagonal
not necessary.
No evacuation chamber available.
Ideas so far, aluminium cooking foil , cut to a ribbon, and wound around;
ground-off front and back of a photo-flood light bulb and fixed over as a
collar; any other ideas?
Google Brashear Process
It's an old Amateur Telescope Maker's recipe
I used it 50 years ago
You need Silver Nitrate
Ammonium Hydroxide
Glucose
A supply of de-ionized water
at that time (1950-60) every good sized town had a shop that Re-silvered
mirrors. They used a two-component Sprayer to flood the glass surface
with a Silver-ammonium complex and co-reacted it with a Glucose solution
to reduce the silver solution to metallic silver, which plated out on
the glass. It's messy, really requires a fume hood, waste disposal
problems, can be an explosion hazard. I did it in a kitchen sink as a
teen-ager! Silver cost about $.50 an ounce then.
Through my employers, I graduated to Evacuation Chambers and Sputter
Coaters and learned to coat with aluminum, tungsten, platinum, gold, carbon.
I think ~10-25 pound sterling would get you the necessary chemicals and
glass-ware plus a bag of Kitty-litter for waste disposal, less if you
are good at scrounging. EG. you could buy "Fine Silver" from a Lapidary
Shop, Glucose as a food suppliment, Potassium Nitrate as fertilizer,
Sulfuric Acid from a Car Battery shop.
Yukio YANO
Saskatoon , Saskatchewan Canada
