Removing a damaged enamel

hello everybody

can you please help me on the following? i am looking for a solution
(presumably acid) to remove the enamel from the metal. can you
please suggest what to use, and where to buy?

i live in geneva, switzerland
thanks a lot
Irma Kvezereli

If it is traditional enamel, fluoric acid. Care is required, the
acid is poisonous. If epoxy based, then industrial epoxy solvent.

Leonid Surpin

Many modern enamels contain a lot of borax to reduce melting point
and thermal shock and so will dissolve in your sulphuric acid pickle.

Nick

The easiest way is to heat the piece and then quench it immediately
into iced water. The thermal shock will eliminate most of the enamel,
the rest can be removed with diamond bits in your flex shaft.

Sandi Graves, Beadin’ Up A Storm
Stormcloud Trading Co (Beadstorm)
http://www.beadstorm.com

I’m not sure if you have access to an kiln, or if this is enamel work
done elsewhere, but a suggestion recently made to me worked pretty
well. I had done a piece that ended up cracking & it was apparent
that I needed to start over as much from the beginning as possible.
It was suggested to me that I heat the piece back up in the kiln &
then toss it in cool water, and the shock will crack the enamel off,
or at least get it started. I did just that recently, and although it
didn’t take it all off, or even most of it, it did get it started.
Perhaps repeating the task would have taken off more. Anyway, I then
took a thick diamond coated disc & used the flat front of it to grind
off the rest of the enamel. It worked quite well, and I was able to
redo the enamelling & it’s looking great now. Thanks, by the way, to
all that helped me out with that one! I just fixed it the other day &
I’m quite pleased. I didn’t put the top coat of enamel on so thickly,
and I waited a week (more than it took to start cracking last time)
before I considered it OK, and it looks just fine. Not quite as rich
of a blue coating on it, since there’s only one coat instead of
3-ish, but a paler uncracked blue is much better than a rich but
craked blue!

Lisa
Designs by Lisa Gallagher