Nail polish to color bulbs

[joetrains]

  Has anyone used nail polish to color light bulbs?

[Bob Keller]

John Grams/Ray Plummer had a sidebar in the July 1997 about doing this using glass stain, if that helps.

 

SAVE A FEW PENNIES AND A LITTLE AGGRAVATION: COLOR YOUR OWN BULBS Using glass stain by Plummer, Ray L.  from Classic Toy Trains July 1997  p. 81

[hielsie]

Tried nail polish on some outdoor Christmas lights. Hard to get an even finish and for me it was too translucent (purple), Try it, it comes off with nail polich remover.

[LittleTommy]

For the last 20 years I have been using cheap hardware store spray enamel paint to color my bulbs.

I mask off the base and use a spring clothes pin to hold the bulb and I make quick passes with the spray can that only lightly color the bulb so that it takes almost 10 passes to get all the globe covered with a smooth coat that dries well.  If you wait for 48 hours to illuminate the bulb, there will be no odor and you will have a nicely colored bulb that looks ( at least to me) almost identical to my precolored original bulbs from the 1950's.

Little Tommy

 

 

[wyomingscout]

Yeah, I did back in the mid 50's on bulbs in a Marx crossing signal.  As a young teen, I thought it worked well.  The old thing still works and the bulbs aren't too bad after all this time.

Like most things, nail polish today probably isn't as good as it was in the PW era.  If you don' t need the clear bulbs anyway, it can't hurt to try though.

wyomingscout

[joetrains]

 Thanks for your input.

  I was dealing with 432 bulbs for 022 switch controllers but bought 1447 bulbs already painted to lower the power consumption somewhat.

[lionelsoni]

As long as you're willing to use a smaller lamp (G-3.5 instead of G-4.5), the number 52 will give you an even greater reduction in power than the 1557 will (55 percent instead of 40 percent).