SPECIAL PROJECTS
MARBLE MOONMAN
In this project, we used the Spectra Chrome LI System to turn the face shield of this moonman sculpture reflective gold.
The artist shipped this sculpture to us in a wooden shipping crate. At nearly eight feet tall and weighing over 2000 lbs, this massive work of art was extremely challenging to move about — we decided to simply mask off the face shield and apply the Spectra Chrome finish directly inside the shipping crate!
Portability is a nice feature of the Spectra Chrome LI System. To accomodate the massive height of the sculpture, we moved the pump sprayers from under the service cart and placed them on top of the table.
The LI System is light and small enough to move and reposition wherever chroming is needed.
We used plastic sheeting to mask off the face shield and protect the rest of the marble sculpture from overspray during the Spectra Chrome process. The raw marble was first cleaned with water-based degreaser; then Basecoat 812-E was sprayed directly onto the clean marble surface.
Most stone or concrete products do not require primer before applying Spectra Chrome basecoat, unless you are filling in texture and smoothing the surface. Basecoat 812-E can be applied directly onto marble, stone, concrete, and similar substrates immediately after degreasing.
This massive sculpture would obviously not fit in our warm space. To create a protected environment for drying the basecoat, we placed plastic sheeting over the entire crate, and allowed the basecoat to air dry overnight at 80 °F. After air drying, the next day we placed the heater from the warm space inside the crate; and baked the basecoat at 135 °F for 2 hours.
This face shield has a relatively wide surface area. When silvering parts like this, it is even more important to always keep the “wet edge” moving; to prevent solutions from running down into dry areas (which would cause artifacts in the silver layer).
Always start by wetting the entire surface area with solutions as quickly as possible — then coming back to fill in the reflection afterwards.
This was a one-off project completed all in the same day. Since the silver did not require protection overnight, we did not apply the usual glossy / frosty Topcoat 311 (no color) first — and instead sprayed the Topcoat 311 (gold color) directly onto the raw silver immediately after blowing dry.
After applying the gold color, a final layer of Topcoat 311 (no color) is applied to add UV protection and durability.
Finally, we placed the plastic sheeting back over the crate to protect the topcoat while it air dried for a few days before delivery.
