Printers plates.

Here I go again...Yes I found these a long time ago, you all knew I was going to say that didn't you?
I found these behind an old house here in our town along with othere metal items, I never attached much interest to them till today I was cleaning them to see how well they would come up, and to my surprise I actually "printed" a picture from one of them.
They are I think Pre-Automobile advertisements and are of the veheicles of chioce some 110 years ago "buggies".
Does anyone know if "eletrolasis" would clean them better than I can with a brush, they are made of lead alloy..........HH.....Johnnn

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Johnnn, before you clean them, make a high density plaster cast of them. You can repair any low areas with dental tools. Use a strong light and a loupe or magnifying light to fix up the detail. When the plaster dries completely (I use a very low temperature oven for 4 to 6 hours) you can pour fresh lead made from old fishing sinkers, bullets and tire weights to make a crisp, clean image. Of course it won't be old and original like your plates but they will be restored. Collectors often have the original displayed with a perfectly restored copy. Add a perfect print into the frame and you have a masterpiece. Gives your piece a bit more value. Double, as I recall.

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"electrolysis" No please don't I have seen and screwed up to many things with electrolysis. GD has the best ideal go with that. A few years ago the local paper sold off a bunch of plates from the 40's and 50's. The guy who bought them cleaned them up made a print on heavy watercolor paper, mounted the plate and print in a shadow box that sold for 75 bucks each. And know it was not me, I walked past them at auction thinking I am not buying them things for 2 dollars each.

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   Outstanding finds! ! those are awesome.  Good luck cleaning those up doing the casts.

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Johnnn, nice find. The print you made is good. The combination of the age of the subject and the eroded condition of the plate are unique and I would think desireable for collectors. Especially if it is on old paper and framed. The mold suggestion is a good one, Plaster casts are easy enough to make and cleaning up the mold would be a simple task since you have the outline to go by. I did some free casting of zinc/lead alloy in open plaster molds when I was a young man and as I remember  getting the plaster mold completely dry was an important factor(BOOM) and casting into a "hot" mold was important to get detail. About 350 F is about right. I used the kitchen oven. 10% zinc or so adds detail too. Tire weights have enough zinc in them. Just a side note: The origional "type metal" plates were mainly tin with antimony added. Antimony is one of the few metals that expands when it cools thus filling in all the small details of the mold. The antimony allowed the type caster to use cold molds. Antimony also increases the hardness thus wearability of the plate. Some manufactures of shotgun pellets used antimony to increase the hardness and make the pellet form a ball. Later type metal plates were esentially "pot metal" mostly lead. I used to get these from the hometown newspaper in 1954 or so.

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