

They were beautiful! A brilliant aqua blue with a very pretty copper background. A small shallow dish on which to place your metal or jewelry pieces. Here is what you need: Two or three hard-boiled eggs (boiled for at least five minutes the yolk should be solid). After about 8-10 hours of sitting in the tub, I pulled them out the following morning. This is an eco-friendly way to oxidize copper and sterling silver. Then I placed the copper sheets on the dowel rods and let them sit over night with the lid on the tub. I poured in some ammonia to the bottom of the tub but not high enough to contact the wooden dowels. I was sure to do this in a well ventilated area and wore chem gloves to protect my hands. I poured some ammonia into a generic spray bottle to make the application a little easier than the big bottle it comes in. The key is to stop before you’ve gone too far. I then sprinkled sea salt evenly over the entire area of the sheets.Īmmonia is the main ingredient in this process. Heat Patina As you heat copper with a torch, it starts to change color, turning different shades of bright red, purple and blue. Once they were washed and rinsed, I did my best to not touch the surface of the sheet and handle them by touching the outer edges only. This part is important since all of these things will interfere with the patina process. The dowel rods will serve a type of “bridge” to keep the copper sheets out of the fluid I add in later on.Īfter the sanding was finished up I moved on to giving all of the sheets a good washing with soap and water to get all of the grit, grime, and oils off. With all the holes drilled in each side, I inserted 3/8″ dowel rods into the holes, spanning from one side of the tub to the other. I drilled holes in the sides of the clear tub I used for the chamber. This is going to be an enclosed chamber where the copper will patina during the process. I started out by gathering all the materials I would need to make a fume chamber.
PATINA COPPER VISMAT HOW TO
Things I Used In This How To Patina Copper Project: So call around and see who in your area sells real copper. Do not touch the surface that you want to patina.

I saw copper sheets for sale in the sheet metal section and picked up five only to later discover that they are actually aluminum sheets just colored copper. The copper patina colour has been systematically explored through a large set of short- and long-term exposed copper metal samples. First and foremost, clean your piece of brass or copper with either alcohol or acetone to remove any oils or dirt so that the patina is consistent throughout the piece. First big take away I learned was that the big box stores do not have real copper.

PATINA COPPER VISMAT TRIAL
It was a pretty simple process once I went through a few trial and errors so I figured I would write up a short tutorial going over my experience. This past week I was trying to make my mom a Mother’s Day present and needed to figure out how to patina copper.
