patination of copper

[mrsekky]

Does anyone have any good recipies for patination of copper. I would also be interested to know any tips or advice on how to get the best effects.


Thanks.

[Boo]

That possibly depends on what you mean by patina - the term gets used to mean slightly different things. Oxidising and antiquing are the way of making it look older, something I do a lot, but you can also bring out greens on the surface with acids usually and heat applied will give reds and blues and a rainbow of surface effects.

What are you trying to achieve?

[mizgeorge]

There are a number of excellent copper patination recipes in Tim McCreight's Complete Metalsmith if you have it?

[Atelier Ava]

The book The Jewellers Directory of Decorative Finishes by Jinks McGrath has a couple of pages on copper and brass patination. It really depends on what you want to achieve colour wise.
Paula

[ps_bond]

Mare urine.



The metal needs to be very clean before patinating; I usually use a horse hair brush and a pumice/water slurry to swirl over the metal to strip all remaining oxides before going on to patinating. For Japanese patination recipes, it's fairly common to cover the metal with finely grated daikon/mooli after the pumice as a sort of chemical pre-treatment.

[MuranoSilver]

Hmm in the absence of a mare would a cat do? Would a Tom cat work
(imagines labelled patination sampler board )
Nic x

[mrsekky]

Thanks for all the ideas.

I was hoping to acheive a green colour on my copper.

Have tried a mix of salt and vinegar which has worked quite well.

I have a rabbit so maybe I could slip a small copper item into his litter tray and see if it goes a funny colour!

I am going to try heating the copper to get a red colour when time permits.

Where can you get household ammonia from?

Claire.

[Solunar Silver Studio]

The mind boggles!! Imagine trying to tell the story of that particular piece to a prospective customer!!!

The thing about patination that bothers me is how do you keep it looking as good as it did the day it was created?? I know we did some heat treatments at college on copper and got some stunning results and then tried different ways of sealing it but it muted the colours terribly!! But then nobody knew what they were doing there...and I mean the tutors - not the students!! There was no metals expert of any king during our last year so we had to sort of make it up as we went along...

[mrsekky]

I am only just starting to try different things with this but I have used plasti-kote fast dry enamel from B&Q today and at the moment it seems to work well.

Have only tried it over a green patination so will have to have a go over some other colours a see what happens.

Claire.

[Emerald]

all you need to achieve red is to heat and then quench but there are othere ways to achieve a brighter red just dont know them and if you just put a watery mix of your borax cone on the metal this gives a good affect aswell