On a side note, I've recently been able to help clear out an old electrical shop, a huge array of stuff saved from the skip. I also bought this lot...
As you can see i've got a lot of NOS 70s Thorn glass shades, NOS Coughtrie Glasses aswell as many lanterns. Two are COUGHTRIE PW15's which I intend to do up and put in the garden.
The bowls are actually plastic, which surprised me. New are available from Coughtrie, but i'm wondering if they yellowing they've gained over the years will T-Cut and polish off, Like plastic headlights on cars? I'm not sure if it's the same sort of plastic.
That’s a nice little collection! I guess it’s worth a go at polishing the plastic ones, but the yellowing may be quite deep if they are quite old.
I also have a few Coughtrie lights about the house, I put up an FS10 on Easter Sunday, took most of the day to drill the damned hole for the cable!! The bricks were so hard we thought the drill had hit a bit of metal… I prefer the light from these over any of the nasty LED floodlights that everyone else seems to love, I put a 6W LED filament bulb in the one I recently put up, it’s plenty bright enough.
Regards
Lloyd
Hi Jamie,
Nice collection of lights there! Now, before using anything abrasive, like T-Cut etc. You can try hydrogen peroxide, which is apparently very good at removing, or in worst cases, reducing the yellowing caused by sun bleaching.
If you take a look on YouTube, search "Paul Restorer"... He restores model cars mostly, and has recently posted a video on the use of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for restoring white plastics. It works on other colours too, though it can cause bright colours to fade if applied for too long. Not that it will be an issue on clear plastics. The results seem to depend upon how badly discoloured the plastic has become, and how deep into the plastic the discolouration has penetrated. The type of plastic can also be a factor in determining how well it responds to treatment.
Hydrogen peroxide? = Hair bleach! Even the shop branded lotion hair lightener will work, though perhaps not as powerfully.
Here's a very weird way of reducing yellow in certain types of plastics... sun!
I've used this on my old Amiga computers that had yellowed very badly and even after a whole day in the sun I started to notice huge improvements.
As found:
During "sunbrighting"
After around 30 hours over the space of two weeks:
Why the sun improves something that looks like it was caused by the sun? Nothing causes arguments in a Facebook retro computer group more, but my personal theory is the flame-retardant additives to the plastic are causing the yellowing (supported by the fact my Amiga had been in a box well away from sources of sunlight and heat) so the sun is effectively bleaching the yellow.
@wayned Odd theory, I suspect like you say it would work for stored items, the Amiga I had looked exactly the same.
With these though, they were outside until last week (I removed them myself) so I suspect they've yellowed because of the sun and not from being away from it.
I need to drill the screws out first, the body of the lights are aluminum, and so are the screws. No amount of WD40 or heat has helped, with two of them shearing and the 3 on the other lantern seized entirely. It's as if body and screws have corroded into one! So time to get the drill.
