Every M-3890 in collectors hands today went through this elaborate process of cleaning sorting gluing and restoration ... it takes on average three to four working days to bring one of these back from the dead and that is only if you have most of the pieces.... The careful cleaning sorting and piecing together of the parts is very time consuming work as is the finishing mixing of paint and filler etc . Sadly of the 28,000 originally produced from 1905-07 not a single one has survived ... call it love... call it obsession ... I set out along with Paul Greaves and Carver Mead to bring back to the modern world one of electrical transmissions most important early artifacts and now I( We) are finished ... Now I am finished with this project ... In total I have restored about 28 of these things with distinct early and late variations coming from each manufacturer - Thomas and New Lexington. Additionally there are a few rare marked as well as more plentiful unmarked examples of both the early and late new Lexington variations . The M-3890 or" Iriquoise type" insulator was produced in the most astounding range of colors of any large porcelain insulator know . Every shade of glaze from near white blond and butterscotch to deep mahogany, sandy dark brown, and near black with a purple cast . some had extreme modeling with bright yellow tan and deep mahogany on the same skirts . Other specimens with original cement contrasted bright yellow tops with near black lower skirts ... creating endless variations ! these things are not just insulators ... They are historic works of industrial art! For every one I saved I saw a hundred more that were not savable and sometimes so wildly glazed that they defy description .. my days of hunting for these are over and so I close it seems a chapter of my life ... it's time to move on