Enamelling

[Neibelungen]

Usually on a minor restoration it's more common to use a cold (pigmented resin or low melt plastic) enamel as a patch, though it can be tricky to get an exact colour match.

Some experienced enamelers will occasionally do a remelt/reflow with an additional matching enamel, it's a risky business and involves significant heating of the item with consequent damage risks to the finish.

As Warstone correctly points out, it's often much less trouble to remove the enamel and replace, but this also often involves completely stripping the other finishes and amounts to a complete restoration, which often can be more costly than the badge itself... hence cold enamel matching as a mask.

[pjac]

Thanks for all the advice, experience, contacts, warnings etc. I've got a number of leads to follow now, as there's a lot of relevant stuff in the replies. I have one plate (3rd Bedfordshire Volunteer Battalion) where there is a sliver of the opaque dark blue enamel missing at the outer edge of the circle, exposing a ridged/rayed white metal base, and another, (2nd East Lancs Volunteer Battalion) where the device (unusually, the sphinx in white metal over a brass rose) sits on a white metal, rayed/ridged background, which suggests to me that at one time this was all enamelled, but all of it is now missing -see photo. Any thoughts on the correct colour? I've seen Notts and Derby plates with a translucent blue enamel, and others, like my Bedfordshire with a dark blue opaque enamel.



I'll have to find out how to do thumbnail photos for posting!

Thanks again for the speed and number of replies.

Patrick