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French Gray Badge question


Marc Sova

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So is there any variations in the French gray badges? In other words were they all nickel plated brass with the French gray background? Or were there some that were all brass and French gray? And, were there others that were brass logo with a nickel outer ring?

    The Ivory DC Emerson 75046 had a French gray badge (It had been painted solid black with the rest of the fan and I removed the black but it was not really salvageable). It looks to have had a nickel outer ring. I thought that the logo was actually brass, but I may be just been brass that was exposed under worn nickel plating on the logo. 
    Fwiw…. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to just do away with the French gray look and paint the background ivory. It’s currently stripped to all brass (nickel plate was shot). Mostly…. Because I’m pondering polishing the brass blade instead of painting it ivory as original….and I think a nickel French gray badge will look odd. Now….if I decide to paint the blade, then I’ll try to source a nice nickel badge (actually have a French gray fan I could steal it from but I hate to do that). 
  Last pic is my French gray fan with badge that appears to be all nickel (logo and outer ring). Second pick clearly shows the back of the badge is nickel. Third pic is badge stripped to brass. 

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You could keep the badge polished because you’re going to polish the blades right?

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11 hours ago, Michael Bouthiller said:

You could keep the badge polished because you’re going to polish the blades right?

most likely yes….but I’ve got to put paint back in the background. Not rrally

an option to leave the entire badge polished since merson never did that. It’s more a question of whether I should paint it ivory or gray. If I go polished blade I think the gray will look odd as would a nickel and gray badge. I’m just trying to find out if there ever existed a brass and gray badge. Or if they were all nickel 

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Mine is brass. Field recoated with Prismatic Powders sandal gray. That's a real trick for a powder coater to pull off. I also did a 27666 in "French Gray", again, Prismatic sandal gray. This badge was done by another member with a paint that matches the Prismatic powder. Some of you may remember this 27666 pedestal from Fan Fair last year. 

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8 hours ago, Patrick Ray said:

Mine is brass. Field recoated with Prismatic Powders sandal gray. That's a real trick for a powder coater to pull off. I also did a 27666 in "French Gray", again, Prismatic sandal gray. This badge was done by another member with a paint that matches the Prismatic powder. Some of you may remember this 27666 pedestal from Fan Fair last year. 

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Thanks. So even the built to last logo is brass not nickel plated brass? It’s hard for me to tel sometimes cause the nickel plate kind of yellows with age. I initially thought the one I’m restoring was brass logo with nickel outer ring, but I think that supposition was wrong and it was all nickel.
   You know there’s also one version like your older fan logo badge….that doesn’t have the fans. Just the mesh background. Saw one a while back. Pretty crazy. Didn’t know that badge existed much less in a French gray. Brass of course. 

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There were a few variations of badges for the 71666 run. Don't quote me, but I do believe mine is solid brass. Been a while since I did that fan. I'll have to take a peek at some of the other 71666 fans I have and try and determine more details on the badges. I'll talk with a couple other guys here at the meet I'm hosting about the badges. 

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Patrick Ray said:

There were a few variations of badges for the 71666 run. Don't quote me, but I do believe mine is solid brass. Been a while since I did that fan. I'll have to take a peek at some of the other 71666 fans I have and try and determine more details on the badges. I'll talk with a couple other guys here at the meet I'm hosting about the badges. 

Well the 71666’s I have (two) are black with brass badges. So I’m thinking it’s only the French gray 71666 that had the nickel. Other than maybe the earlier style with the earlier badge….maybe those were brass. 

Edited by Marc Sova
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  • 2 months later...

Guess I never updated this post with the finished badge. Pretty pleased. Even though this ivory dc fan originally had a nickel french gray badge, the nickel was too trashed so I decided too go all the way to brass. I sort of talked myself into doing ivory though instead of gray. Well…after a few attempts at wetsanding and the background paint coming off, I decided to remove all the ivory paint with acetone or lacquer thinner, and then I shot it with SEM self etching gray primer. The idea was to wet sand this to expose the lettering, then put one quick light coat of ivory over that and expose the lettering again with more wet sanding. Well, once I started wet sanding the primer it was becoming clear that I was just starting to lose the relief of the raised lettering. So I decided to just clearcoat the SEM primer and the look is pretty close. It’s a tiny bit too blue but not too far off. I’ll add a pic holding it up to my French gray fan (interesting though that the French gray badges do not seem to match the French gray paint on the fan, at least not on mine). Also….a “before before” pic of the badge earlier than the one I posted in the original post. 

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6 hours ago, James Gaspard said:

Those are remarkable!

Thanks James. I’m pretty happy given it was my first ever. Well….id done the motor tag just prior so that was kind of a primer for doing the cage badge! 

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