Polished x246

G'day all,

I won't bother putting this in the gallery as I've removed the chrome and polished it.

The reason I removed the chrome was it was very thin in places with brass showing through.

It's a shame the reflection makes the brass look two toned in the photos.

 

Here's one of it working fine albeit in the middle of the day.

 

Looks great brass, these are dime a dozen so I reckon you can afford to have a good play with these.

 

looks nice matty

 

Polished brass always looks great.

 

Looks great. Nice and shiney!

 

I just overpaid then.

I just brought one home that I paid $15 for. The top part of the hood was so rusty it fell off in my hand.

The fount has not one dent in it. Once I clean the fount I think the chrome should look very good. It has a Tilley marked glass and perfect top and bottom insect screens.

The cage is straight with surface rust.

To buy the above mentioned good parts as spares off ebay.anywhere they want your first born child as part payment.

I think the $15 was well invested.

 

Hi Matty just a technicality Guardsman's (50's X246's) are "Speculum Plated" (a mix of nickel and other ingredients)
Graham

 

Thanks Graham.

I had seen the word speculum previously on the forum and just assumed it was perhaps the English or British word for what we call chrome.

I think the Americans call chrome nickel plated?

I'll probably just keep using the word chrome as a generic term. It's easier for this old brain to compute.

 

Speculum, chrome & nickel plating are all different as far as I'm aware.

 

Just what I was about to say, Ross.

Chromium and nickel are two completely different chemical elements. Side by side, I can just about tell chrome and nickel plating apart - the latter seems slightly more blue. Speculum is some sort of alloy of variable composition. Now I have no idea how an alloy can be electroplated onto something but clearly it can be. I presume the individual metallic cations dissociate in the electrolyte and re-associate in exactly the same composition on the object being plated. Anyone got a clue...

 

Baffling me with science is a bit unfair.

While all very interesting, and if anyone does know the differences that would be nice to try and understand, I'm sticking to my guns and continuing to use the word chrome as a generic.

 

"Speculum" is what Tilley used on their shiny tanks.

Speculum is short for "speculum metal" which is an alloy of copper and tin. It was (?is) used in mirror making.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_metal

Cheers

Tony

 

... and then there is this quote from Terry Marsh's website:

" In the 1950s Tilley also made De-Lux versions of the above X246 lanterns.These were plated in Speculum over the brass.

The late John Findlay found this about Speculum in a book about metal alloys:
16.5 parts tin, 32 parts copper, 4 parts brass, & 1.25 parts arsenic.

Neil McRae [Note: CPL Member], in whose collection this 1950 - 54 lantern is, believes that Speculum was only used by Tilley during the 1950s and perhaps until 1963,
when they moved from Hendon, U.K."

Cheers

Tony