Molding & Casting To Repair The World's Gaudiest Antique

A few months back John and I were antiquing at a steampunk fair - as one does - and under a vendor tent in a field we stumbled across a pair of the most staggeringly gaudy antique lamps:

 

Imagine this, times two.

Thing was, apparently they came from an abandoned mansion in Detroit, and we kind of loved them. John more than me, so over the afternoon he kept dragging me back to that tent to look them over. And as I pointed out all the problems - this bit was missing, those parts were broken, they'd take an enormous amount of work to clean and rewire - I started falling in love with the challenge of it all.

Plus those iridescent crystals are amaaaazing.

Around viewing 3 or 4 a friend with us pointed out that one of the metal hanging shades had two entire points snapped off - a deal breaker for sure. John's face fell. Our group turned to move on.

  Exhibit A.

"Unless..." I said, "We... molded the existing shade pieces and cast resin replacements?"

BAM. We bought the lamps.

Now, I've never repaired anything with resin like this, but I've always wanted to try. And wow was it fun. Here, let me walk you through it.

First, you need this:

Amazing Mold Putty Kit

It's a two-part putty you mix together, then smoosh on top of the thing you're casting. In our case, that was the unbroken point of one of the metal shades:

The silicone mold cures in just 20 minutes, then we were ready to pour some resin:

We use Amazing Casting Resin. You should be able to get both the mold kit & the resin for less than $30 - and both go a long way, so you can do multiple projects.

Because the lamp points curve outward, John had to reinforce our mold with extra high walls near the bottom.

The resin came out like this:

Again, the tip is extra thick, to account for the curve. So next John sanded down the excess thickness, then trimmed off the parts we didn't need.

Which gave us this:

Lookin' good, right?

To attach the resin I used a 2-part epoxy putty.

Kitting up. Be sure to mix the 2-part putty while wearing gloves; it sticks to EVERYTHING.

I rolled a thin snake of the epoxy putty, then jammed the resin piece in place. The putty hardens in about five minutes, so I had that long to clean off as much excess as I could with a toothpick.

 

I left the back seam thick, though; that gets sanded down later.

I still had a few hairline cracks after the piece was attached, so to fill those I tried another concoction I learned from the internet:

Superglue and baking soda.

If you mix those you'll get a paste that quickly hardens into the strongest substance known to man. Seriously. It's insane. The paste was a little too thick for my purposes, though, so instead I dripped superglue into the cracks, then quickly dumped baking soda on top. Blow off the excess powder, and you've got a nice hard seam of resin-like glue.

 To smooth down the seams, enter my trusty Dremel with a tiny pointed sanding bit:

 

Next we get to see how well I did on the sanding: WE PAINT!

Starting with a base coat of Liquid Leaf in Pale Gold.

Followed by John's oh-so-skillful aging with his custom color match made from craft paint:

John literally did this for a living in our previous life, so he's pretty good at it.

You ready for this?

Ta-DAAA!

Here's a turn-around of the entire bottom edge. Can you spot the repaired ends?

I can spot one - my first repair is a bit chunky - but the second I can't tell apart from the others. Even in real life, I have to keep turning the shade upside down to find the inside seams to tell which is which.

SO FUN.

I hope you guys keep this in mind next time something precious - or ridiculous and gaudy - needs repairing. You can use the same method for frames, knick-knacks (missing hands?), or anything with repeating patterns. And it really is possible for mere mortals!

The lamps will be an ongoing project, I think, and the next thing on our repair list is even MORE daunting: replacing a few of the missing crystals. Crystals we have no prayer of finding, since they were custom-made for these lamps. I have an idea of how to (try to) recreate our own with clear resin, though, so the casting adventures may continue!

Unless of course one of you happens to have these exact crystals laying around in your junk drawer, in which case... [Bambi Eyes]?

Happy weekend, everyone!