Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion How to straighten curved/bent procelain sign

How can I flatten out my accidentally bent pennzoil sign. It has a long roll from end to end. As you can see it is up about 1 1/2 in the center. It seems like I could just carefully roll/bend it back over the soft arm of the couch or something. Itried this and put quite a bit of pressure on it and it just sprung right back.

How much do I have to worry about porcelain cracking/chipping off?

Should I even do this at all?

I've heard of people driving over the sign to straighten it out

Big danger of cracking the porcelain.Then you would be sick.Tack her on the wall and use mirror clips on the top and bottom of oval.JM2C

Robert

I agree with Robert. Not worth the chance of having the porcelain chip.

Anyone ever tried heating a piece indirectly and applying pressure?

That would seem a more logical method allowing the molecular structure of the metal and porcelain to realign.

Just a thought.

Driving over them with a truck will work but you may loose a little porcelain. Signs with some porcelain loss already may not hurt them any.

A Warped sign might have been done in oven at factory.

You'll have a distorted area if whole sign is not heated. IF the molecular structure was the same for porcelain & steel it Might work, but they're not. Space Shuttle Columbia is a perfect example, a ceramic tile was missing/damaged which allowed heat inside, metal expanded to point it exploded.

Well for now, I'll just leave it alone. The sign has a decent amount of stressed porcelain as it is. Long very thin stress cracking in a couple places. I would say they happened when it got bent but they the patterns dont seem to agree with this theory. I tried applying pressure over the arm of the couch as mentioned. I couldn't believe how hard I leaned on it!! I started to hear a little crackling sound and stopped. The sign just went right back where it was. I may have made a little difference but if so it was very little. And damn, I was leaning on it pretty good.

As has been suggested by Robert, fasten to wall using mirror clips. The clips will put enough pressure on the sign to hold it in place, but if done correctly will not put any undo pressure on the porcelain...

I use both the clear and the metal clips for my ad glass and they work great....