Topic: Strathearn? but with flat polished base

[chriscooper]

Not seen the flat polished base before, please enlighten me 
Thanks for looking.
Chris.

[tropdevin]

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Hi Chris.

The clear weights with a signature and date cane always have flat polished bases, but I have seen a few coloured grounds with similar treatment. I think it was sometimes a means to deal with a damaged base.

Alan

[pooleandpaperweights]

It can also be a weight which was to be used as a doorknob.  Think I've read that before on here!

Looking at my doorknobs around the house that would make perfect sense.

Ian

[Lustrousstone]

I have a labelled P9 with a polished base

[chriscooper]

Presuming of course it is a Strathearn weight ?
It's 2.5" diameter is that fitting for a doorknob ?
Also looking at the base it is open and totally clear and I can actually see the canes where normally I can just see the solid coloured splodge of the ground and no canes visible if that makes sense?
Thanks for the comments so far.

Chris

[KevinH]

My only example of a Strathearn doorknob is just over 2.25 inch diameter. The base is matte ground, but that could have been the final stage of preparing a candidate weight to receive the metal fitting.

[w8happiness]

Hi Chris, this is a very attractive weight you own!
A couple of weeks ago I bought a Strathearn P7 with uncommon flat polished base, and aventurine core spokes, which is too not a common feature with this model. Only the clear ground P10 signed with S and two digit year from 1969 on had always a flat polished base/as Alan stated. But why?
I thought that Strathearn tried to enhance their products as a reaction to the Perthshire spinoff in 1969, by improvement in some details; Perthshire started with the limited editions of PP11 and PP12 in 1969 and until 1974/1975 these models have exactly the polished flat bottoms; I even have a Perthshire PP1 with polished flat base, which may be from the transitional year 1969-the early PP1 had a fire polished base normally...
I think if it was ground for repair reasons, the profile would have suffered noticeably.
   

[chriscooper]

Thanks Erhart, I thought 11 spokes also a little different too?
Not sure how they are applied to the door knob and whether they would have bothered to polish the base.
The base looks so much better flat ground and polished, forgive my ignorance but still wondering why it looks so much different to the normal base base in regards to be 'open' and able too see right through the bottom to the canes as opposed to the usual solid coloured splodge of the fire polished base.

Chris

[tropdevin]

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Hi Chris.

Given the large numbers of these spokes that they churned out I suspect the unusual base is accident rather than design - the maker failed to roll enough frit onto the first gather before he picked up the canes.

Alan