Can they alter color in insulators too?

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CanadianBottles

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Amber swirls are real, but pretty common on those insulators. They do increase the price of otherwise ridiculously common ones though.The cat thing looks like something someone who has a furnace did as a craft. Making a chandelier wouldn't damage the colour, but you would have to drill holes through the insulators. Which I suppose isn't really a problem if they're Hemingray 42's or something.
 

Robby Raccoon

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Canadian Bottles, thank you very much.
I'm interested in how they do that to a worthless insulator like those without cracking it. What would one use? I doubt a standard drill would function.
 

botlguy

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Robert, the crackled glass pieces were mostly done back in the 1970s. It can still be done today by heating the insulator in an oven to as high as it would go and then removing it with tongs and plunging it into a bucket of cold water. My understanding is that not all types of insulators stay together, it depends on how they were manufactured, but most do.The green HEMINGRAY - 9 is an authentic color (I don't know if that one is authentic or not), many / most bidders wait until the last moment so as not to run the bids up. Watch that one to see if it goes up in the last 5 minutes / seconds. Jim
 

MuddyMO

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That 7up colored Hemingray-9 shouldn't go for too much. Despite what the price guide may say, it's actually an uncommon insulator that fetches around $15 to $30 mint. These also came out in a washed out green with RDP's.

In ebay land, you never know! World stuff can sell for a lot more!
 

Robby Raccoon

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Jim, yeah, I lost a bottle I really wanted in the last seconds of the auction last night. Heh.
MuddyMo, what's a good book on Hemingrays? I'm hoping my library, if ever I can get down there, might have one
 

BillinMo

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I'm not MuddyMO but the other guy from MO... :) You'll find the fairly recent insulator books are listed here: http://www.insulators.info/books/The most comprehensive Hemingray book is the third one down. It's mainly company history, documents and photos. I hate to say this, but most libraries don't have a lot of insulator books, if any. It's a pretty specialized field. But you never know what might turn up with some searching, though, so perhaps ask the librarian to help you with an inter-library search and loan. I did a quick search on the Grand Rapids library catalog site, and it looks like they have one of the old John Tibbitts books. They're okay, but they were written in the late 1960s-early 1970s. The prices are extremely out of date, and we've made strides in historical research since then.
 

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