Thank you, Jacob. This thread was quite a while back. Haven't got the right time to further experiment on these things yet. I did secure some other raw materials for such stuffs.
Keep going Myn! What you are doing is real pioneering research research! Did you ever consider glass powder with sodium oxide? If one fills patches with this, and then heat it up with a flame? Wishful thinking?
Excellent Myn! I wonder if you could get a gloss by wet 'n dry (down through the grades to 2000 should give a nice semi-gloss). After initial bake?
There is some amount of glassy composition within whatever I used earlier, Jacob. The silicates in the binders would partially fuse at firing temperatures. Normal glass would fuse when subjected to those temperatures. It would become a little runny. When cooled, it would just flake off instead of adhering to the steel. The process was actually more complicated that what I've shown here. Yes, Julian, it would take a semi gloss if you wet sand it with successively graded grit sizes, starting from coarse, and gradually to 2000 or higher. It won't be easy as the 'paint' coating has a very high hardness, matching those regular abrasives used on sandpapers. In the earlier tests, the pigment used was a refractory green chromium oxide, which has a melting point way above 2000°C. It is also an abrasive by nature. Even vitreous enamels would fail if we subject them to the treatment shown earlier. Whatever porcelain enamelled surface colours would just turn very dark or black, due to fusing and oxidative reactions with the groundcoats and base metal.
Yes Myn, quite complex chemistry. Coleman surely used enamel, being the best "value for money" solution. What you are doing, could expose a real game changer!
