Bolts and threads?

An article on realorrepro.com https://www.realorrepro.com/article/Kerosene-Glass-Lamps talks about glass oil lamps, unrelated to what I have in mind but this made me wonder:

"New bolts, left, connecting new hardware are threaded the entire length. Old original bolts have threads on only about 1/2" to 3/4" at the end. Original nuts are square, new are hexagonal. Of course restored and repaired old lamps may have new hardware"

Is that always true?

I have a (now still most likely) circa 1890-1900 candelabra which upon closer inspection and de-assembly has its middle bolt that connects all the pieces together, threaded all the way. Sort of like the bolts that connect the candle holders / cups to a chandelier arm are, if you are familiar with that.
The ends of the bolt look slightly rough (cut by hand) like old ones usually and the nut is square and slightly asymmetrical (slanted, either trimmed or cut)

So what's the truth about this subject?

 

I won't comment on the excerpt but if the threaded rod shown has been exposed to air for 100 years it should be darker. Red rust like that is recent. Forget about bolts, what you have is a threaded rod and bolt rules don't apply. Today we call it althread rod. No idea if modern-type althread rod was used back when or not, but seems like I've seen thin pipe with finer threads only near the ends on older lamps.

 

95% of it is inside a hole that goes through a glazed ceramic piece, both ends of which are shut by closely fitted brass hardware. Not quite airtight but the next best thing.

As for the rust, well, in my opinion it could be very recent, even if the rod is a 100+ years old. Someone maybe polished the candelabra a few years ago and washed the polish off, making the rod rust.

I just checked an oil lamp I have (supposedly 1890-1910ish) and it also has a middle rod with threads all the way.

Thanks for your help. But maybe someone'll know even more about this than we do so far.

 

The cast metal foliage thing in top picture looks like plated spelter from the appearance of the broken, oxidized leaf.

 

That isn't 100 year old steel pictured and neither is the brass. Mid century at oldest.

 

It's gilded brass / bronze. I've scratched it and it's golden in colour.

 

Don't take this as critisism, many of you are great at valuating American antiques, but maybe aren't as deeply familiar with European ones.

I've seen an identical candelabra and many similar ones catalogued as circa 1900 / late 19th century by a european auction house who have dozens of experts in different fields.

The image above really doesn't showcase the brassware in realistic light because the focus is on the bolt / rod.
Here's the "foot" of the candelabra which also you can partially see in the previous picture:

 

A useful clue is a thread guage. Threads vary but only in a fairly limited way, and their pitch and profile usually define them, along with the diameter of course.

If that rod has a metric thread it may support my feeling that this is mid 20th C. Spanish. In the 60s tons of 'antique ' brassware came from Spain.

 

Here are some additional pictures of the bolts.
@afantiques this candelabra is a very distinct late 19th century style with cut crystal prisms (mine is missing those but the holes in the wax pans exist) and mostly available in Sweden based on my extensive online research. Where these kinds of candelabras were made, I don't know. Haven't come across reproductions of this exact style.

Back to the structure:

 

I've seen a lot lamps, both old and new, where the pipe was threaded only at the ends.
Older lamps I think are more likely to have only the ends threaded, so like springfld I'm not sure how far back the use of all-thread goes.
AF's comment on thread gauge is relevant also; US lamp-part threads have been standardized for quite a long time, back to the 20s and 30s, I believe.

 

Can we see whole bottom incl bottoms of all feet?

 

It's really difficult to get a good picture of the whole thing, here's at least most of it. The two other feet look just like the ones in the picture. The light areas are polish residue as is the spot someone thought was oxidation.

 

Thanks, feet are quite pristine-looking indeed! Back to the threads, they look like the common Acme form which has a trapezoidal cross-section in each thread, has been in use for a century for machinery but I have no knowledge of its use or lack thereof in lamp hardware.

 

If they are those:

"The Acme thread was developed in 1894 as a profile well suited to power screws that has various advantages over the square one which had been the form of choice until then."

On the other hand, those areas without rust look rather square (a 90-degree angle) but I'm not cretain based on the picture.

 

Of course everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I think given the absence of any of the signs of age usually seen on this type item, I'd have to agree with Terry more or less, I think it is post-1970 manufacture. It is probably plated spelter; I don't think the makers picked the one floral piece pictured above to cast in spelter, much more likely the whole thing. OP says she recognizes it as an antique pattern, but hey, that's what reproducers copy. I've never seen an Acme-thread, bare steel rod inside an old lamp, but I'm not very bright when it comes to lamps.

 

There are plenty of those. Like the occasional black dots on the gilding where the brass has reacted through it over the years.
The ceramic parts have plenty of crazing.
Nothing about the casting or details say post ww1.

It's not spelter unless there's a brass-coloured variety available. It's brass and this is not an opinion. I know what spelter looks like. If you look closely enough you can see how the gilding has worn off of several places, underneath which there is brass.

I have not found one logical reason to believe it's not an antique. According to the replies here, 90% of everything I have / have had is made in the 70s, yet I've never seen any of those items listed or labelled as such anywhere else except here. It's scary that antiques are being treated as reproductions based on unsure assumptions.
I don't know how to say that without coming across rude, don't take it personally.

What comes to the assumed acme-threads, well, there's no information about them available.
It's better not to debate things we don't even know for sure about.

 

It's better not to debate things we don't even know for sure about.

Debating things is one way of finding out more, in order to know for sure about them.

Some types of object are so widely reproduced that the repros way outnumber the antique. To add to the confusion, for some the middle of the 20th C is way back in the mists of time while some of us were there in person. Something 60 years old is something we could have bought new in the shops.

Another point is quality. Fine casting is usually visible from any period. The best was done in bronze and then hand finished. The people who bought stuff bought quality and were rich enough to pay for it.
The explosion in cheaper, look-alike items did not happen till there was a relatively wealthy middle class to support the market, and this was mostly a feature of the twentieth century, and the type of items they bought depended on what was available in style.

The early years of the twentieth century were well supplied with style, but the repro mills churned away in the background all the time, turning out roccoco for those who liked it when Bauhaus was what the smart set were buying.

The final arbiter must be personal taste, of course. Being a bit old does not imply merit, so most of the time the important thing is not 'Is this antique' but is this really good, and a ton of old stuff simply is not all that good. It's just old. So the question is not really, when was this made but how well was this made.

 

To me both things matter very much.
To answer that question, I think the candelabra has rather well-done castings. The image below shows a detail that's across the picture a little less than 2 inches in real life to put it to scale:



The texture alone is, in my opinion synonymous with circa 1900 European brass / bronze fixtures.

 

I have a pair of well-made undoubtedly circa 1900 sconces and I thought I would compare the threading of the candle cups to those of the candelabra we've been analysing.

On the left you can see the candlecup from the candelabra. On the right from the wall sconce.
Below that first the threading of the candelabra and underneath the threading of the wall sconce. Apart from a difference in size and diameter, they look very similar in shape.

 

Thanks for posting those pix. The surface appearance if the iron or steel screw in both looks antique, nice and dark etc. The screw in the candelabra looks a great deal different, and in fact looks fairly recent to me. Come to think of it, we haven't seen a pic of the whole thing, have we?