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Resilver glass mirror

I am a installer of lightning protection and have customers with victorian houses that have antique lightning rods with glass globes that were used as decoration.And I'm looking for a way to restore the mirror finish inside them. The glass globes are about 4 1/2 inches in dia. with a 1/2 inch hole at each end.I have found that they used mercury to coat the inside of these glass globes during the turn of the last century.What I'm looking for is a safe, liquid solution to coat the inside of the globes and once dried will give them a silver mirror finish.

Daniel Fisher
lightning protection - Huntington, Indiana, U.S.A.
2006

I do not know this for sure, so I will not insist, but I doubt these were really mercury. Two-part silvering is a process well-known and long known among glass smiths, so that's what I'd have thought it was. In any case, that's probably a safer approach than mercury.

Silver nitrate and a reducing agent are simultaneously sprayed onto the surface, which deposits a thin coating of metallic silver. The glass must be well sealed to keep the silver from oxidizing or they won't stay shiny. But if they are sealed, well, I've seen hollow glassware about a century old that is still shiny.

AMPS Industries is a specialist in antique mirror finishes.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2006