Color print on steel and glass by oxidation with heat or chemistry

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 19, 2014

I was surfing in 470000 Russian thesis database and I found an research on laser oxidation of metals for obtaining color patterns. I returned to Google and found above stainless steel piece made by Singapore researchers with nd yag lasers. Mechanism : Heat causes an chromium oxide layer at bottom and iron oxide layer on top of the first and different heats increase the iron oxide layers and change the color.Similar mechanisms apply on glass.

I found electricity is used to create automobile point welds and same technology could be used to create controlled heat and controlled color large pixels to form an lower resolution color print on stainless steel or glass. If I am not wrong , as we see at dish washing machines , if we ground the piece , no danger.

Is there a simpler , chemical way ?

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 19, 2014

Chemical Patination of Metal and Glass

There is an chemical answer to patinate and oxidate the metal. Which sculptors used for thousands of years. Patination recipes are sometimes dangerous and I dont know any for steel or glass. I will ps. here if I can find.

PS: Sone say dung the answer for glass. Louis Comfort Tiffany and his men created the most beatiful color glass on earth with some say with carbonic acid patination and ammonia salts .

A book reports Tiffany irridescent glass has been made with spraying silver or bismuth in to a fire and than from there on to molten glass. When the glass piece went to closed furnace , wait the fire turns to green and they spray tin chloride . They measure the heat with first fingers nail.

Second irridescent formula is dropping in to molten glass copper gold alloy , gold is ruby , copper is amber.

They call these glasses carnival glasses after 20's which Harry Northwood invented poor man's Tiffany and produced every color. I am after that recipe now.

Tiffany example :

Antique Soda Glass , Surface Soda Loss Glass Examples :

PS3:Carbonic acid is the chemical compound with the formula H2CO3 .

PS4: I read many times , Tiffany used Carbonic Acid at his glass patinations but I read silver in glass and tin chloride spray on to hot glass also.. Carbonic acid mechanism is works for antique glass , his works differantiate from the old with non cracked clean and new surfaces. He did see these examples while visit in Europe and when came back to America , he requested the same look from the Nash.

PS5:Stainless steel is only be patinable chemically to gold and gold brown . Normal steel could be rust only.

Umut

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

Beautiful both the Tiffany and the antique glass examples. Mustafa wasn't carnival glass pressed glass that was sprayed with liquid metalic salts after the glas was removed from the form? The Dictionary of Glass: Materials and Techniques von Charles Bray has a chapter about the production of iridescence in glass and that's what carnival glass is. Maybe you can get a copy of the book.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 20, 2014

Thank you for the explanation of technique of Carnival glass. Important question was glass hot when sprayed or not ? If cold , we can print color images on glass , MDR.

Umut

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

The glass was hot. To quote the book: "Fuming: This is a method of exposing hot glass to fumes, usually of tin chloride or silver nitrate, to produce a thin interference layer on the glass. This results in an effect of iridescence. In the past it was common practice to place some of the metallic salt in a tin at the mouth of the furnace and to drop a hot piece of glass..into the tin to create fumes. The glass being worked on would then be held into the fumes to create the iridescence. Today's practice is to mix the metalic salts with alcohol or destilled water and put the mixture into a small hand garden spray. The mixture is then sprayed onto the hot glass in an extraction chamber until the required amount of iridescence is achieved. The hot glass is then reheated in the glory hole before being cracked off to be annealed."

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 20, 2014

I read before Carnival glass invention , the iridescent glass was ultra expensive. But suprisingly they use one process step same with the Tiffany glass , the spraying of tin chloride on to hot glass. Tin chloride is cheap but I think lowering the expenses depends of no use of silver like in the glass alloy at Tiffany Glass Studios. And use of molds not hand blowing the glass at 1920s Carnival glass. Tiffany or more correctly his chemical researchers Nash - Son and Father - was famous to add lots of gold to produce the rail system red stop light. It was secret and everybody asking why they were requesting lots of money to produce red light glass. I think they were the last artisans who wants to produce the best like Faberge. Look at todays jewels , glass art , watches , cars, yachts...

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

According to the father of a friend who is a glas blower Gold is still used in the production of red glass not only by Tiffany but also most other smaller glass artists and manufacturers. He also stated that Gold has been in use for several centuries to get the red color. Glass is a beautiful material.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 20, 2014

I am talking about 130 years ago.

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

Mustafa I am talking a few hundred years more.

"The famous Lycurgus Cup, made in the 4th Century AD., contains both gold and silver. The first written instructions for making gold ruby glass date back to 1685 when Andreas Cassius published his work, De Auro, in which he described for the first time the method of producing a red precipitate of stannic acid with gold" from RUBY GLASS STILL SHINES BRIGHTLY
by Bob Brooke

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 20, 2014

Yes , You are right , I had been asked your question to myself when I bought Arthur Nash Notebook on Tiffany Glass Recipes. He kept formulas from even Tiffany. Tiffany did many attemps to learn the recipes but recipe book are opened to public only 10 years ago . Nobody knows how Tiffany created his glass colors and tricks, how the others recipes are older or not. And main red coloring material today is copper for red. Gold left out from the industry long time ago. Lycurgus Cup is different , it does not use gold as dye but uses gold nanoparticles as the two color for two lighting condition. Its totally different technology.

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

They also don't know how to make the blue glass used for chuches those formulas were lost as well. Copper is the substitute and much cheaper than gold but gold is still used for certain hues as the hues created with copper and gold do not match 100% and also have a different saturation. But in today's cheaper is better world very few people and even less mfg care about such things.
Something that might interest you is that Tiffany's favrile glass was patented in 1894 and with some luck the patent explains the process much more precisely. I also found many sources that claim that Tiffany himself invented the process and that it is based on an old roman techniques.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 20, 2014

Thank you. Tiffany invented the look in Italy when he saw Schilemann s Pompeii and Herculaneum excavation findings. Every recipe is the Nash product , Americans does everything to honor american Tiffany and to make delete a British Glass Scientist from the history.

MDR · Feb 20, 2014

Found this interesting to me article it starts with a formula for gold lustre glass
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0709/byko-0709.html
It seems that Arthur's son also had a bit of a problem with Tiffany to say the least.
What I've read so far indicates at least to me that Nash has perfected and modified well known formulas or used more scientific means to get the desired results but is also not the mega genius his son portrayed him to be.
"Tiffany had been experimenting with glass since the early 1870s. Tiffany
and John LaFarge, along with others, attempted to produce glass that came in a
wide range of brilliant colours, and incorporated the leading as a part of the
design. This opalescent glass, which used metal oxides as a colourant, was a
centuries old technique lost to most glass manufacturers who instead used coloured enamels fused in place" from An Investigation Into Louis Comfort Tiffany's and
Tiffany Studios' Architectural Metalwork by Paula Kristina Kulpa

The Americans are not alone in that the brits are just as bad in that regard everything was either invented by a brit or an american.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 26, 2014

Was Tiffany an chemist or chemical engineer ? If not , no success is possible.

MDR · Feb 26, 2014

Mustafa was Daguerre a chemist no was Fox Talbot a chemist again no most things in the history of photography were invented by non chemists. This is the case in many fields not only in photography.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 26, 2014

Their inventions could be copied worldwide , they are highschool chemistry with todays standards which does not include complex chemicals , color , heat control. Glass have thousands of years of history and Nash made better than all past examples. Photography have 200 years history and your references neither compete with old examples nor used color , melt or heat. If you read your sent link , you find the recipe extremelly complex and non chemist can not accomplished them with balancing all chemcial knowledge between chemicals.
Nash was one of the most successful glass chemist in england and england was the number on on glass research.
Dont underestimate the art and science , Tiffany was a rich man , everyday drinking champagne and spends half of hour in lab per day , at the mornings. You cant underestimate the craftsmen also. Tiffany have only supplied the money like pope in italy to Michelangelo. If pope visited him , he has no role in sculpture making but a moderate keen eye to art like Tiffany.
All the drawings done by women workers at shop and nobody knows their name today , !!!!

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Feb 26, 2014

As Eastman Kodak has no role in kodachrome.

MDR · Feb 26, 2014

Don't underestimate the czech czech glass is vastly superior to everything ever made in England. The biggest british achievement in glass was Pilkington and their floatglass other than that their glass was more middle of the run. The truth is that if it was invented or made in the east it's seen as inferior by the west while in reality a lot of products from eastern or in the case of the czech republic center of europe are equal or superior to western products. That includes glass.

I agree with you that Nash was the genius behind Tiffany and before Nash it was John LaFarge. But both is needed the artistic input from Tiffany and the knowledge from Nash/LaFarge without the artistic ideas the latter two wouldn't even have had the idea to create something in the line of favrile glass.

Color print on steel and glass by oxidation with heat or chemistry

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency