Pitting on Magnesium plate
I recently purchased an older magnesium plate and there is some pitting on a portion of it. Is there any way to fill in the pitted areas? Thanks for any help with this.
Steve
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if the pitting isn’t too bad you could try an engravers rubbing stone, it’s like a hard eraser, does pretty good on mag dies.
You could also use fine grit emery paper. Lay it on a flat surface and run the block over it to take off the high areas of the corrosion. Clean the surface carefully, then any pits that remain can be filled with Plastic Steel Epoxy (a two-part epoxy filler from Devcon, better for this than J-B Weld or PC-7), then scraped or sanded after it dries.
Someone told me once that dings in wood type could be filled with bees’ wax. I’m not sure how one would go about it, nor if it would be suitable for magnesium cuts.
Best regards, Brian
Beeswax was used to fill in the gaps between reverse-style wood type (that is, where the letters are white on a black background) and piece borders while printing. Not sure about dings, but wood putty has been used for that.