Chemical apparatus; Electroplating; Glass blowing and working; Glass coatings; Glass grinding and polishing; Lampwork; Mirrors
To get good mirrors for galvanometers, I have found the best plan is
to grind and polish a large number together, on a disc perhaps 8 or 10
inches in diameter. I was led to this after inspecting and rejecting
four ounces of microscope cover slips, a most wearisome process. That
regular cover slips should be few and far between is not unlikely,
seeing that they are made (by one eminent firm at least) simply by
"pot" blowing a huge thin bulb, and then smashing it on the floor and
selecting the fragments. As in the case of large mirrors, it is of
course only necessary to grind one side of the glass, theoretically at
all events. The objections to this course are:
(1) A silver surface cannot, in my experience, be polished externally
(on a minute object like a cover slip) to be anything like so bright
as the silver surface next the glass; and,
(2) if one side only is ground, it will be found that the little
mirror hopelessly loses its figure directly it is detached from the
support on which it has been worked. Consequently, I recommend that
these small mirrors should be ground and polished on both
sides--enough may be made at one operation to last for a very long time.
A slate back is prepared of the same radius of curvature as it is
desired to impart to the mirrors. Bits of thin sheet glass are then
ground circular as described in the last section and cemented to this
surface by the smallest quantity of clean archangel pitch, allowed to
cool slowly and even to rest for a day before the work is proceeded
with. The whole surface is then ground and polished as before.
The mirrors are now reversed, when they ought to nearly fit the tool
(assuming that flats are being made, and the fellow tool in all other
cases), and are recemented by pitch to the appropriate backing ground,
and polished. If very excellent results are required, these processes
may be preceded by a preliminary rough grinding of one surface, so
that the little discs will "sit" exactly on the tool surface, and not
run the risk of being strained by capillary forces in the pitch. We
have always found this necessary for really good results.
On removing such mirrors from the backing, they generally, more or
less lose their figure, becoming (in general fairly uniformly) more
concave or convex. About 5 per cent of the mirrors thus prepared will
be found almost perfect if the work has been well done, and the rest
will probably be very fair, unless the diameter is very large as
compared with the thickness. The best way of grinding and polishing
such large surfaces (nests 10 inches in diameter) is on a grinding
machine, such as will be described below. The polishing is best done
by means of paper, as before described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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