daguerreotypes on mirror?

[R Paul]

I was just wondering since daguerreotypes are made with silver coated copper plate, could you use a front surface mirror instead?
Mirror coating a piece of glass is not too difficult.
Rob

 

[AgX]

Commercial front surface mirrors have either got a Silver or a Aluminium layer. There will be a protective coating too.

 

[greybeard]

In theory, yes; in practice, you may find that the silver has to be a good bit thicker than can easily be deposited by the Brashear process, and vapor-deposited layers tend to have internal structure and stress that will react differently from electroplated silver.

I played with this back in the 1970s (using a laboratory evaporator and Corning 7059 glass) but saw that the silver film was much too fragile. What I would still like to try is using chromium for adhesion and copper for conductivity, and electroplating enough silver to make a Daguerrotype. (It is easier to get a mirror surface on glass than on thin copper.) But this is not something that scales down gracefully, and I doubt that anyone who doesn't already have the equipment would acquire all of it just for this purpose.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Front surface mirrors will not use silver since they are essentially unprotected against hydrogen sulfide in the air which would otherwise quickly turn them black. A conventional mirror (looking glass) has a thick protective coating on the back to protect the silver coating.

So get out your buffing pads. One must suffer for one's art.

 

[R Paul]

Front surface mirrors will not use silver since they are essentially unprotected against hydrogen sulfide in the air which would otherwise quickly turn them black. A conventional mirror (looking glass) has a thick protective coating on the back to protect the silver coating.

So get out your buffing pads. One must suffer for one's art.

I do already. I carry around a RB-67-with a tripod

Well it's good to find out that it can't be done. You don't go crazy trying to make it work,and you can spend the time on something else

Rob

 

[htmlguru4242]

IIRC, JG Motamedi (I believe that's his username) has done this on glass that he has silvered himself. There was a topic about it here back in 2009 or so. I'll find the link.

 

[htmlguru4242]

Here:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[TheToadMen]

Here:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.