Re-silvering elwood

[Dcohio]

Just got my 5x7elwood home yesterday and still have to modify my bench so she'll clear the ceiling, but I got looking at the original head and was thinking it might need to be polished or resilvered. Not sure it's really needs it but was curious if anybody has a diy fix if it does need done? I still have alot to do before I can start on any of it but would love any info.
Thanks,
Doug

[aduncanson]

The Reflector of my 8x10 Elwood has a lot of dark area, but the person selling me mine said that it does not matter. My experience has been that that was not too much of a stretch of the truth. I would try some printing before losing sleep over the condition of the reflector. Many larger cities offer re-silvering services for mirrors and re-tinning services for pots & pans. These services may be capable and suitable for the Elwood reflector. For all I know, the original plating may have been, not silver, but tin or nickel. (I was told that the reflector is spun from copper which I believe to be easy to electroplate.)

The (undated) 8x10 Elwood instruction manual indicates that the silvering is protected by lacquer and so should not be polished. They offered to re-silver the reflector for $6.75.

[Dcohio]

The gentleman I bought this from gave me a copy of the instruction manual. I don't think it would be a problem just was curious if anybody has redone one themselves. There seems to be alot of diy'ers here so I figured someone would have already tried something. I also have a cold light head with it and will play with it too.
Thanks,
Doug

[rjmeyer314]

I have had 3 Elwoods, 2 5x7's and an 8x10. One of the 5x7's had a spot about 2" square where the silvering had flaked off. It didn't seem to hurt the uniformity of the illumination any. Try it before you go to a lot of effort to fix it.

[Pawlowski6132]

Cold light head.

[Graybeard]

If you are using the Elwood glass diffusion plates, some tarnish or darkening of the plating inside the head probably won't matter much.

You could probably line the inside of the reflector dome with aluminum foil if the plating has deteriorated to such an extent that you have siginificant light loss. This wouldn't be an expensive thing to try.