Orange badge restoration

[210bhp]

I saw Yoda asking about this subject recently. It appears the guy in Australia who did this work has sadly passed away and it has been difficult to find anyone else to do it. There were a few suggestions on the thread but no concrete leads, so.......

I decided to have a crack at the problem myself.

I am no photographer so you will have to excuse the dodgy pics but here is the result of about 20 hours work.

Where I started, typical early badge find,




As usual the enamel is chipped or missing. The badge is weathered. Sometimes the pins are missing. Sometimes there are road dings and chips.

After a bit of cleaning and removal of ruined enamel I got to this,




I left the black enamel untouched, there is a small chip in the short bar on the RHS. There was a big ding in the bottom point of the shield which I massaged a little better but not perfect. I then got to this,




Then comes the tricky part. To ensure the orange is all the same colour I needed to remove the one good piece of orange enamel. You would think that this would be easy as the other bars seem to fall out easily. Not so, it is pretty hard to remove without damaging the badge even though it is about the thickness of a couple of sheets of paper.

Then the enamelling. This was trial and error and I had several goes before getting a finished result. It is not perfect and I certainly could get it better next time. I learned a few tricks that help as I went along and some of the orange bars are better than others. Some are really hellish like the bottom one due to it's shape. However I got better as I went along. Then a final cleanup. I did not go overboard with this as some of the restored one look too 'blingy' for me. I tried to leave it with a patina look of an old badge.

Here the finished result on the simple wooden buck I made




The only problem now is that you can see the chipped black band I decided to leave alone.

I'm pretty certain with a little more practice I could get these perfect.


Regards
Mike

[johnM]

Looks very good to me. Well done Mr Birtwhistle.

[yoda]

Hi Mike

Good work! I have a slot booked for my badge with PD Enamels but the earliest they could do was October so I have the old badge on as is. Yours looks great and retains the patina which is very appealing. I saw a picture of one that PD Enamels did and the finish was excellent but it came back as new and very bright.

What did you use to clean it up? And how did you enamel it as I you couldn't have fired it in the normal way without spoiling the black enamel finish (I am guessing).

Thanks for posting

Feroz

[210bhp]

Feroz

There are several tricky parts to the process which is why I took my time and went carefully.

The destruction of the good enamel while firing the new enamel.
Making sure the pins don't fall off during firing
Cleaning the bright surface very carefully (took me 2-3 hours) round the branches (very tiny) without damaging the black enamel
Cleaning the bright surface round the horse (1-2 hours) without damaging it.

I am pretty sure that black re-enamelling the horse would be beyond me and the branches would be extremely difficult. I was happy getting a decent result on the orange bars.

Firing was very carefully done (trial and error) to not spoil the black. I think I have the temperature and the time just about perfect now. First attempts were too cold and not long enough but I was cautious in building it up slowly.

Cleaning up was by a variety of several tiny tools and different polishes/paste again by trial and error. I practiced on the back section by section until I was happy before tackling the front.

I could probably do the next one in 10 hours and get it even better.

I like the slightly distressed look too. Bright gold is just too new looking on our cars IMHO.

Interestingly I have several good original badges and without doubt the 'orange' colour is different on most of them! It took me a few goes to get the colour I wanted too.



Regards
Mike

[bjmullan]

Finally see what you've been talking to me about

[Bruce M]

How about this for inspiration ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86NsiH3BDe0&sns=em

[210bhp]

Hey Bruce, that is very inspirational work and facinating to watch but so much easier with liquid material which I didn't have.
My application was cunning with non liquid. I used a razor blade edge.


Regards
Mike

[Darren65]

Very creative

[Bertroex]

its a bit similar to building up a molar, I suppose....



So, not only can you not eat on the kitchen and dining table (the aforementioned red interior on it) but the oven is out of service as well? Luckely there is always the BBQ and microwave, eh?

fantastic work, though.... I tip my hat.

Bert

[jtparr]

Hymmmm...looks like a project I should tackle..having got an early orange badge that's chipped which came with the Carrera...where do you get the liquid enamel from please.....?

Regards
Jonathan

[yoda]

I'm pretty certain with a little more practice I could get these perfect.

Regards
Mike

Mike - I would be more than happy to volunteer my badge, purely in the interests of perfection! Where do I send it

Regards

Feroz

[mycar]

But seriously, good work Mike. Enamelling can be everso tricky what with silver solder melting at 450C, gold at about 1000C and vitreous enamel at 1400C, I can see you`ve had a very delicate balancing act to keep every thing in place during the firing. Not the type of thing you can do in the oven at home.

Regards, Mike.

[bjmullan]

Here is a better picture of Mike's work and if you go to flickr you can see an even higher resolution version. Viewing this picture Mike realises he still need to do a bit more cleaning.

[210bhp]

Ok, so I made some modifications to the technique of restoration.
Badge two turned out much better.

Here is where I started,




And here is how it turned out. I am going to call call this a distressed finish. I will post up a picture later of the full bling package





Regards
Mike

[DarthMJH]

That looks great Mike