H&S horn...to refinish or not

[RSStone]

Where did you buy this at?
Harvey Kravitz

The horn below looks great? Where do you get this paint? For years, I use Testors translucent blue, green and red. The drawback is the cans are small and take about 5 cans for a horn like yours.
Harvey Kravitz

Is dupli color metalcast #MC201, I polished the metal and then used basecoat. Practiced on scrap sheet metal until I got the depth I liked.

I got it at O'Reilly auto parts here in Oklahoma, some Advance auto carry them and they're available through Amazon online as well. You'll want to get a can of the Metalcast base/ground coat and do some test runs on scrap metal to figure out how much Color to layer on.

[cchaven]

Thanks for the paint suggestion. The blue horn looks really good. I'm still undecided as to what to do with it though. I don't think it'd look good if I left the interior original and repainted the exterior.

Also, what are everyone's thoughts on this being H&S or not? I was mostly basingthat off the hanger shape and panel style.

Thanks

[phonogfp]

Also, what are everyone's thoughts on this being H&S or not? I was mostly basingthat off the hanger shape and panel style.

Thanks

You're correct - it's definitely a H&S horn.

George P.

[RSStone]

Thanks for the paint suggestion. The blue horn looks really good. I'm still undecided as to what to do with it though. I don't think it'd look good if I left the interior original and repainted the exterior. Thanks

I agree about the inside, personally I'd hunt for an artist that could reproduce the inside as well or just have a solid red restoration paint job, but many feel like 100% original is better no matter the condition...

[martinola]

Personally, I'd be thinking about "spotting" the scratches with dyed shellac. If you've done digital restoration in photoshop, it would be a similar technique. Match the color and tone of the surrounding paint and dot it lightly with a very small pointed artist's brush. Do it a little at a time in a well lit room. If your eyesight is like mine you might consider using an Optivisor for seeing up close (I love mine.)

At a certain point you'll say "good enough" or "yecch". If you say "yecch", then you'll know it's time to repaint the inside as well. In any case, good luck with your project, you'll learn stuff from this. Please post your progress here so that we can learn with you.

Regards,
Martin

[cchaven]

Thank you for all the suggestions. It's good to know that I was correct about it being a H&S horn.

Matching the colors and touching up the interior of the horn is a bit beyond my abilities so for the moment I'm going to leave it as it is. If the horn were solid red, it'd be a different story.

It does work well with the Home Model B after I made a shorter crane extension arm from a piece of stainless bar stock gotten from True-Value. Here's an image of it mounted.

[phonogfp]

That's a nice-size horn. Not too big nor too little.

Should you someday feel like further developing your painting skills, that horn might be a good candidate. There's really not much to lose regarding its original paint. I always stray toward "originality over condition" but that horn isn't nearly as nice as the machine it's on.

You might want to lengthen the top rod on your horn crane. Ideally, the chain should be close to vertical, so as not to put pressure on the carriage.

George P.

[cchaven]

It is pretty far gone...so yes it would be a good one to experiment on. Maybe I'll redo it in red at some point, with yellow in the center and the gold accents. We'll see. I didn't notice the angle on the chain until after I'd taken the photo.

As for the machine itself, it's in pretty nice shape. It looks like it was well taken care of, though it is missing the script decal. I'm not sure just what has been done to it...both case and lid look good and the bedplate is in good shape with just some gold loss here and there. Here's an image of it with the 11 panel Home horn, though from a different angle.

Thanks for the encouragement though...with the Home horn being so large, the H&S horn does have it's plusses.

[RSStone]

I thought this might help you with your decision in the long run... Still need to gold pinstripe the lip and clear coat, but the artist finished today, colors are a bit different but I let her give her Artistic touch to it while staying as true to the original as possible.

[cchaven]

That looks really good. The artist did a good job on the flowers. It looks like it started out a bit more corroded than mine. I really like the color. How did you strip it?