Spangles

To most British people of a certain age, Spangles are small square translucent boiled sweets originally in strawberry, blackcurrant, orange, pineapple and lemon and lime flavours. Other flavours were added later on. I remember cutting out a coupon from a comic that promised a packet of Spangles if you posted the coupon to the Mars confectionery address. I’m still waiting.

There are other meanings of the word spangles. One is defined as small pieces of shiny metallic material sewn on to garments; sequins. Another meaning is in the field of budgerigar breeding. ‘Spangles’ in that sense refers to a type of colouration or patterning.

Only very recently have I learned of yet another meaning for the word. While looking for suppliers of galvanized steel plant containers, I came upon a glossary of terms for industrial galvanizers. My choice of reading encompasses all. In this glossary was the word spangle. Spangles were defined as: Crystalline formations on the surface of the galvanized coating caused by the presence of lead and other alloying elements in the galvanizing bath. So now we know.

The term spangles used in the galvanization industry leads me to a handy link: galvanised plant containers. To many, galvanised means the patterned finish (complete with spangles) that is used to protect steel from rusting. This finish occurs with hot dip galvanizing which produces a tougher, more corrosion resistant finish when compared to electrolytic galvanisation. In my opinion the hot dip finish with visible spangles is not an attractive finish and is really a protective layer that should be coated with paint.

There is a more attractive finish available for galvanised plant containers: the ‘aged’ galvanised finish. This is achieved with acid etching and looks far more attractive. These plant containers are available from plantcontainershop.com of course!

On a side note, there are some plant containers made that look very similar to the Spangles that were mentioned at the beginning of this article. If you would like plant containers made to look like your favourite confectionery or anything else for that matter, we can supply them!