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• Proto Finish: In Greenwich And Stamford, A Business Proves Its Mettle
By Mary Beth Faller

Greenwich Metal Finishing marries Old World craftsmanship with space-age technology to refurbish beautiful objects that have been dulled by age or neglect.

Silver pieces that are blackened with tarnish are repaired and restored to brilliance. Great, glittering chandeliers are painstakingly taken apart, piece by piece, rewired, refinished, cleaned, waxed and reassembled.

In addition to renewing the usual heirlooms, partners Stephen Grisanti and Anthony Cassano offer services you never knew existed for parts of your home that you don't often think about, such as trophies, doorknobs, faucets, musical instruments, firearms, outdoor lanterns, boat hardware, countertops and weather vanes -- anything metal. And they'll brighten up your corporate workplace too, refinishing sculptures, fountains and elevator doors.

"We do a tremendous amount of work for churches. We'll replace chalices, hardware, door- knobs, escutcheons," Grisanti says.

The lifelong friends started their business in 1996 in a small area at 67 Church St. in Greenwich. Now. that's the showroom, where customers drop off their heirlooms. In spring 1998, the partners renovated a 4000-square-foot cinderblock buildinlg in Stamford's South End.

That's where the rnagic happens. The state-of-the-art blasting and polishing rooms roar while craftsmen labor over each piece. Priceless silver and gold items, large and small, are arranged neatly on shelves. The workspaces are spotless.

One of the shop's specialties is refurbishing chandeliers, a complex, delicate affair, starting with removal from the client's home.

"You can't just unhang it and put it in your van," Grisanti says. "You have to remove it piece by piece. If one crystal falls, it disintegrates"

The chandelier's center frame is smothered in bubble wrap and the whole thing is taken to the workshop. There each crystal is logged, a process that can take up to three hours.

Once logged, each crystal is cleaned and polished to resist dust. Missing crystals are replaced. Grisanti and Cassano have developed sources for crystal in Europe, inlcluding Italy and the Czech Republic. "lt has to match exactly," he says, "with the same tone and cut.

The metalwork is refinished and lacquered, and then rewired. Likewise, missing metal parts are replaced. "If we can't find the part, we'll cast it here," he says.

Then the chandelier is reassembled, with each crystal rehung by gold wire that is reoxidized to look old.

The entire piece is placed in a foam-filled crate and taken back to the home, where the staff will remount it from the attic using a winch. The chandelier can be mounted on a cable that is electrically lowered for cleaning. This whole process costs about $500 to $600, and Grisanti says such a refurbishing will last years.

Smaller chandeliers that are dropped off are photographed before disassembly. If clients wish to reassemble and rehang a chandelier themselves, the company will mark the parts.

The firm does much business converting European chandeliers and other lighting to United States' specifications, he says.

Chandeliers are painstaking to refurbish, requiring a lot of handwork. But high technology has a place in the business, too. "Some technology is labor saving," he says. "The old-fashioned way is to strip by hand, but this way, it can be done in 20 to 30 seconds."

In the walk-in blasting booth, the technician wears an air-conditioned suit with a big helmet, like an astronaut. He uses a hose that blasts fine aluminum oxide dust onto large items, such as aluminum countertops, lawn furniture, fountains and the like. The aluminum oxide can be recycled

.

''We never use sand, which contains silica, which is damaging to the lungs," Grisanti says.

A smaller blasting unit is shaped like a chest-high baby incubator. The worker's arms are placed into mitts attached to the side and the piece -- in this case, a horse-shaped copper weather vane -- is inside the unit. One hand holds the blaster and the other holds the piece. In seconds, fine plastic particles blast the green patina off the horse and the copper once again glows an orangy red. A hundred hours with a hundred Q-Tips couldn't reproduce the perfect stripping of the blaster.

Next are the polishers.
"The polishers are like artists,'' Grisanti says. "Polishing is dangerous, with the lathe going around. It's not a forgiving machine."

A series of buffs, from abrasive to medium to fine, is used to bring out the glow in the finish.
After polishing, a piece might be lacquered. The lacqluers are mixed in a high-tech, explosion-proof room, then applied to the item by masked workers in a coating room that has a room-sized vent.

The array of services the partners provide is fascinating. Refinishing great-grandma's silver tea service is about as basic as it gets, but even then, Grisanti and Cassano have branched out.

"Sterling is beautiful to work with." Grisanti says, "You can make it perfect. We remove a lot of engraving from items people buy at tag sales."

The partners have formulated a unique baked-on epoxy for outdoor and marine use that protects metal from UV rays. A patent is pending on the product, which is ideal for boats, as well as metalwork that is exposed to salt air, such as outdoor railings and lanterns. "We've used it for waterfront country clubs with chandeliers," he says.

They have finished radiators for landlords, a job that Grisanti admits is back-breaking and not especially creative.
An old barber's chair sits in a back room. "It will cost $2,000 to rechrome that," Grisanti says. "Most of the cost will be in taking it apart. You're paying for the time, not the chrome." The client is considering it. "We work for painting contractors. If you spend $3,000 to paint eight rooms you're not going to put back the old dirty hinges," Grisanti says. So he'll refurbish the doorknobs, hinges, faucets or other metalwork. "And it's addictive. People will do one room, see it, and do the rest of the house."

Sometimes, Greenwich Metal Finishing works backward.
"One chandelier came in with a bright, polished finish. The client wanted a distressed look, a verde patina," Grisanti says. "So that's what we did. The finish may age a little more, but now no maintenance."

Metals can be finished with a high gloss, matte or antiqued look. "The beauty of the patinas is that they're all different. "We're both perfectionists," Grisanti says of the partners. "Our hands touch every job."

Greenwich Metal FInishing can be reached at (203) 629-8479.

– Mary Beth Faller is a frequent contributor to HOME magazine.

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