A quiet counterpoint to the TSA

I found these while I was taking a Thanksgiving break and I thought they were clever.

The text of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is printed in metallic ink and will show up on the TSA's body scan images. You can find them here.

Thinking about the TSA's latest power grab and that Palin woman's assertions that those of us with a D in our political affiliations somehow hate the Constitution reminded me just how much I admire the Constitution of the United States. Here's the text of the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sarah, if you're reading this you probably ought to read the whole thing some time. Here's the Constitution and here's The Bill of Rights.

As irritating as the TSA's security theater can be, the idea of someone seeing my bits in a scanner doesn't bother me very much. I'm far more concerned about the general climate of paranoia that allows all manner of Constitutional abuse to go unchallenged. That same climate of paranoia is what allows failed politicians who libel their fellow citizens to write best selling books and it allows a minority political party to use metaphors of war to describe their disagreements with The President.

The United States is in serious trouble and that trouble can't be chased away by bureaucratic muscle-flexing or by pitting citizens against one another in the search for a scapegoat.

Now, who'll be the first one to volunteer to wear these undies through an airport?

Thanksgiving re-runs: My last post on faucets

This is a series on faucet finishes I wrote and ran originally in February 2009. I'll be back tomorrow with fresh stuff!

Fixtures, fixtures everywhere but what does it mean and what should I pick? Well, what it means is that there are a bunch of manufacturers who make a bunch of finishes and the one you should pick is the one you like. Many thanks to Kohler for all of their help with this series. They make a high quality product at a price point that's a value proposition. A Kohler faucet is not a faucet you'll be replacing any time soon. They are as sound mechanically as they are beautiful too.

So here are a couple of fun facts I got from my pal Sarah the product manager at Kohler. 

Brushed nickel is the number one selling finish for kitchen faucets.

Chrome is number one on baths.

A new finish has a ten year run rate. By that I mean that when Kohler introduces a new finish, they expect it to remain in production for ten years. Though exceptions to that ten year rule abound. Chrome and nickel have been consistent best-sellers since the 1930s and oil rubbed bronze has been in production for the last 15.

As an aside form me, expect oil rubbed bronze and its kin to be the next ones forced into retirement.

What's making a strong come back are warm gold tones. And that's designer speak for brass. You heard it here first kids, inside of five years all the cool kids will be sporting brass faucets and cabinet hardware. Again. Ugh. I never liked it much the last time around, but who am I to buck a trend? So here's a run down of some of Kohler's cool fixtures and finishes.

Never use harsh abrasives or lime-dissolving chemicals to clean a new faucet of any kind. On a faucet with a living finish, the heavy duty cleaning stuff will remove your hard won patina. On consumer-grade faucets, a thorough clean with the big guns will damage the clear top coat and end up reducing the life of the finish. Remember, a soft cloth and a mild detergent are your plumbing fixtures' best friends.

This is the Antique in  faucet in Brushed Nickel

This is the Purist in Polished Chrome

This is the Clairette in Stainless

This is the Devonshire in Brazen Bronze

This is the Devonshire in Oil Rubbed Bronze

This is the Finial in Vibrant French Gold

This is Memoirs in Polished Chrome

This is Pinstripe in Polished Nickel

So your options are seemingly endless, but know that a quality faucet will last forever. So remember that when you're considering your finish options. Forever. Hmm.

So thanks to my pals at Kohler for all the good information. I now know more about faucet manufacturing and finishes than I ever thought existed. If you ever have a question about this stuff, just shoot me an e-mail. I'm sure I'll be able to answer it.

Thanksgiving re-runs: The Peoples' faucetry

This is the fourth in a series of posts on faucet finishes I'm running during my Thanksgiving break. I wrote this series originally in February '09.



So if the higher end of the market uses ancient foundry methods to make objets d'art doing double duty as bath and kitchen fixtures, what's available to the rest of us? You know, the same us who bristle at the thought of an $1800 lavatory faucet.

Well, that's where our pals at Kohler come in with their modern and efficient production methods. Metal casting and finishing have come a long way since the Babylonians figured out how to cast bronze thousands of years ago. When plumbing fixtures are mass-produced now, they are cast in a variety of base metals (usually alloys of brass), then they're plated and finally, they're clear coated to resist corrosion and to make the finish last a lifetime.

All manufacturers have their own, secret alloys and formulas; but the production methods used by all of them are essentially the same. Individual components are cast in a base metal alloy and then polished and cleaned. Then the components are plated with a finish and covered with a clear top coat.

Plating takes two forms these days, and the first method is electroplating. Electroplating was invented in the early 1800s and was in wide-scale use by the middle part of the same century. Electroplating uses electricity to deposit a thin layer of metal on another metal. It's a pretty simple operation now, but figuring it out in the first place represented a huge leap forward.

An electroplating chamber is essentially an electric circuit. An anode is made from the finish metal, in the diagram above that metal is nickel (Ag). The anode's connected to the positive pole of a battery. The target for the electroplating (in the example above, a spoon) becomes the cathode and gets connected to the negative pole of a battery. The anode and the cathode are submerged in a bath of conductive solution and the electricity gets turned on. The electricity flows through the solution to complete the circuit. As the electricity leaves the anode, it takes nickel molecules with it. When the electricity lands on the cathode, it leaves the nickel molecules behind. Ta-dah! We have an electroplated spoon.

There's a second finishing method called physical vapor deposition (PVD). Physical vapor deposition is a marvel of physics and chemistry but I'll spare you another description of a process here. Suffice it to say that in PVD, the conductive solution is replaced with a gas and the whole process takes place in a vacuum. PVD allows a manufacturer more control over the finished product and by adjusting the mixture of gasses in the vacuum chamber, a manufacturer can achieve a number of effects that aren't possible with electroplating.

I bring this up because if you're in the market for a new faucet or two, you will come across the acronym PVD. PVD is never defined and that kind of officious acronym use drives me nuts. So now I know what it means and you do too.

Once the plating's done the fixture gets its final color and finish. If the final finish is something like oil-rubbed bronze, then there's a multi-step powder coating process that follows the plating. If a final finish is something like brushed nickel, then the plated fixture has a texture applied to it. The actual finishes always sit on top of a base of plated metal.

After all that, the fixture gets a clear coat that's usually cured with heat. It's kind of like a clear glaze on pottery, though the temperatures are nearly so high as that. This clear top coat is what allows Kohler to offer a lifetime warranty on their finishes. Oil-rubbed bronze will look like oil-rubbed bronze forever, brass finishes will never tarnish and nickel will never get any more dull than it was the day it was installed.

So when you look at this vibrant brass finish from Kohler, you're not really looking at a brass fixture. If you could see it in microscopic cross section, here's what you'd see.

These same electroplating and PVD methods get used on all mass-market finishes from brushed nickel to stainless steel, from polished brass to chrome. This is not a bad thing. Plated and sealed fixtures last longer and look better longer than their solid-metal counterparts. So remember that you're talking about finish colors, not finish compositions when you leave the high end of the market behind.

Thanksgiving re-runs: Patinas on a budget

This the third in a series on faucet finishes I'm running over my Thanksgiving break. I wrote them originally in February '09.



So for the last couple of days I've been talking about living finishes and patinas and how they fit into the world of plumbing fixtures. To review; copper, bronze and brass as reactive metals --they change color and texture as they react to their environment. That change is called a patina. A patina is what corrosion's called when it's desirable. Think about it. The patina silver develops is called tarnish and it's a badge of shame. Copper does the same thing and people call it verdigris and prize it. Interesting.

Now, in addition to those naturally-occurring color and texture changes, the word patina is also used to describe virtually any color applied to metal. Although that word tends to be reserved for colors that mimic a naturally-occurring patina. Make sense?

So, if this is what bronze ingots look like,

And this is true brushed bronze that would end up being used on a $1900 lavatory faucet,

(Plinth, by Paul Martin Wolff)

what are you supposed to do when you have a budget?

Enter our friends at Kohler.

This is a $300 lavatory faucet, the Fairfax single control, and it's being shown here in Kohler's finish, brushed bronze.

Now, when Kohler refers to one of their fixtures as having a brushed bronze finish, they are talking about its color. When Rocky Mountain Hardware talks about brushed bronze, they're talking as much about the composition of the faucet as they are the color of it.

True bronze made by somebody like Rocky Mountain is a labor-intensive process and bronze is a notoriously finicky metal. Not only that, Rocky mountain is a bronze foundry and they make their bronze fixtures and hardware using sand casting and the lost wax method. Surely you remember the lost wax method from grade school social studies. That's right, Rocky Mountain does things the way the ancient Babylonians did and they charge accordingly. I'm not knocking Rocky Mountain for a second here either, seeing the fruits of their labor makes me weak in the knees. It's really beautiful stuff and it's intended to be a once in a lifetime purchase.

But love it though I do, I can't afford to throw thousands of dollars around on lavatory faucets and that's where our friends at Kohler come in again.

Kohler doesn't make that brushed bronze Fairfield single lever lavatory using methods handed down from the ancient Babylonians. But what they do make is beautiful enough.

Large scale plumbing manufacturers cast a faucet from a base metal; usually brass, zinc or a combination of the two. The base metal faucet is polished and then electroplated. Once it's electroplated they then apply a patina and then finally, they seal the color with a clear top coat. As soon as that fixture leaves Kohler's production floor it's locked in time. It will not continue to change. It won't evolve into another color. In fact, it's guaranteed not to change for life.

So if this is Rocky Mountain Hardware's deck-mounted faucet with an applied rust patina,

here's Kohler's answer to that patina, oil-rubbed bronze. Again, what they're describing is the color.

The two faucets pictured up there are separated by production methods, a slight variance in color and about 1500 dollars. The real bronze fixture will continue to change over time and the bronze-colored fixture is guaranteed never to change. Confused? Don't be. Let the price tags be your guide. If a lavatory faucet costs over a thousand dollars, chances are good that it's made from copper, bronze or brass and will have a living finish. If faucet costs under $500, it will not have a living finish and it will look factory fresh for life.

So Monday I'll delve into the exciting world of nickel, chrome and steel. I'm already giddy with anticipation.

Thanksgiving re-runs: No really, what's a living finish?

This is the second post in a series that started yesterday. I wrote them originally in February '09.



OK, so yesterday I ran through three basic, reactive metals that come into play when it comes to faucets: copper, bronze and brass. When it's the actual metal we're talking about, manufacturers use terms like "living finish" and "organic finish" to indicate that their fixtures will continue to age and change with time. I'll get into nickel, chrome and stainless (the non-reactives) later, for now I want to stick with copper, brass and bronze.

Now, these living finishes are pretty much the exclusive province of the higher end of the market. For a lot of people, the changeable nature of brass, copper and bronze is a selling point. And that changeable nature comes at a premium.

Here's a $1500 kitchen faucet from Herbeau. It has a living finish of weathered copper and weathered brass.

And here's a $1900 tub faucet in weathered brass, also from Herbeau.

These fixtures are truly made from brass and copper and then they have a patina applied to them in the factory. These patinas are pigments and chemicals that react with the base metal to speed up the aging process. These patinas allow the base metals to look like they're already aged upon arrival. On a living finish, the metal is left unsealed. That is, without a clear top coat to prevent corrosion. Without that clear topcoat, these faucets will also continue to age and their colors will continue to evolve as the base metal reacts with the environment. No two of these faucets will age at the same rate or go through the same color phases. Their continued evolution is completely dependant on the environment where they're placed. Hence the term living finish.

It's important to remember that the world of plumbing fixtures doesn't use the conventions of science to categorize these finishes. Fixture manufacturers across the market use these metallurgical terms to describe a fixture's appearance, and not necessarily its composition. However, when there's a desirable base metal involved, that fact is made amply clear.

Here's a deck-mounted faucet from Rocky Mountain Hardware. It's made from bronze and has had a rust patina applied to it. Rust is iron oxide, a common reddish pigment. So this faucet is made from bronze with a reddish brown patina applied to it. With time it will continue to to turn more brown. It also has a suggested retail price of $1900.

Here's a wall-mounted faucet, also from Rocky Mountain Hardware. This faucet has been cast in bronze and has a medium patina applied to it. It carries a suggested retail price of $1600 and it's mind bendingly beautiful. Bronze has a warmth to it that no other metal comes near. Bronze has been a desirable metal for thousands of years for a very good reason --it's beautiful, strong and lasts forever.

This medium finish also looks suspiciously like something that started showing up in the consumer market around ten years ago, oil-rubbed bronze.

Now oil-rubbed bronze is where my conversation with the Kohler finish developer comes in. Since these living finishes and desirable base metals are the province of the high end of the market, how does this stuff trickle down to the consumer end? Well, come back tomorrow when I tackle the inter-market grudge match between true bronze and  the oil-rubbed bronze gang.