How to age brass with vinegar

Many things and materials lose their attractiveness when they age, but this does not apply to metals and alloys made from them. Patina, or a coating of oxides, gives metal objects high cost and value. It is for this reason that elements made of aged metal can be found in a stylized interior. Many people wonder how to patina brass at home. In fact, this is not difficult to do, the main thing is to stock up on the necessary equipment and adhere to the rules for performing such work.

How to Aging Brass with Vinegar - Metallover's Guide

Patination is a technique for “aging” the surface of metal or wood, which is achieved by applying dyes based on various acids. As a result, the products acquire a special charm and the spirit of antiquity.

Before carrying out manipulations, working surfaces are put in order, then treated with a special primer from a spray can, which allows the paint to better adhere to the surface.

Patination of metal requires time and patience; we will look further at how to apply patina paint to the surface and what effect can be achieved.

What you need for work

The very meaning of the word “patina” has nothing to do with the dyeing process. It is of Italian origin and refers to the film that forms on metal after prolonged interaction with oxygen.

Initially, you had to wait a long time for the metal to oxidize itself, and the result was completely unpredictable; now this technique can be reproduced at home with your own hands using the following materials:

patina of the color you like (in powder);
liquid solvent;
brush (size 2-3) or sponge;
small plastic or glass trays (do not take metal ones, they can interact with the paint);
metal product that you want to decorate.

Pay attention to safety precautions! Patination products involve working with chemical oxidizing agents, solvents and require special care.

It is recommended not to work in confined spaces without respiratory protection. It is better to work in the fresh air, in rooms with good ventilation (with open windows, an exhaust fan on, a draft).

If acid gets on the surface of the skin, immediately rinse under running water and then apply a paste of baking soda.

If rashes, burns or any skin changes occur, consult a doctor immediately!

Protect your hands! Always patina with gloves.

Patination colors

On different metal surfaces, completely different color schemes can be achieved by patination. The most common patina color is greenish, which is produced by the oxidation of copper. On other metal surfaces, the resulting shade may be completely different:

Rich yellow or ocher color on steel surfaces.

Chocolate brown on brass and bronze items.

Dark gray on silver items.

The choice of dry patina for metal work is quite varied. Powder is sold in almost every hardware store. Most common colors:

aged silver;
natural or oxidized copper;
red gold.

Brighter radical colors are also available, for example, blue, lilac, red, allowing you to achieve an original effect on the surface of various metals.

Surface preparation

Decorative application of patina requires careful preparation of the surface being treated; the metal must be perfectly smooth. There should be no signs of corrosion on it; it will not allow the surface to be well primed; the top layers will quickly bubble and peel off.

All burrs must be removed, chips and potholes must be filled and sanded with sandpaper (first coarse, then finer).

The prepared product is coated with a special primer (most conveniently, from a spray can), and then metal patina paint is applied to it.

Please note that the patina effect looks best on items painted with dark, especially black paint. The painted product must dry well, otherwise the patina will not adhere well and you will not achieve the desired effect.

Patina paint application technique

There are two ways to age metal: applying patina with a brush or sponge. By placing dissolved paint on the tip of a brush, you can achieve completely different textures, directional strokes and different depths of paint. Do not wet the brush before starting work; it must be dry; a wet brush will cause smudges and drops on the metal being processed.

Do not take a brush that is too large or small - the optimal bristle size is 2-3 cm. The sponge gives a “dusty” effect, but do not press it too hard, otherwise pores will be imprinted on the surface being treated.

Keep a napkin with solvent and some of the base paint with which the product is painted at the ready. Working with the patina should be virtually error-free. Repeatedly applying patina to metal in the same place gives an unsightly “flat” effect. When painting individual elements, be careful: if you accidentally “smeared” something nearby, simply paint over this area with background paint.

Surface preparation

The first point is preparing the surface for work. First of all, we remove the manifestations of corrosion - the patina will not stick to them. Then remove chips, burrs, and potholes. The product is sanded to a smooth surface. To do this, use coarse, then fine sandpaper. After leveling, the master applies a primer. It is better to do this not with a brush, but with a spray can.

To improve the appearance, many craftsmen first paint the product in a dark color, and only then apply a patina. In this case, the paint must dry completely. Most often, black is used as a base. Any shade of patina looks advantageous on it, regardless of the choice of the artist.

Do-it-yourself patination (blackening, aging) of copper, brass and bronze

Patination of copper, as well as other methods of its decorative processing (including at home), can make products made from this metal more attractive and give them a touch of noble antiquity. Items made not only from copper, but also from its alloys such as bronze and brass can be subjected to this treatment.

Using various methods of patination of copper alloys, you can achieve completely different shades

Patination and oxidation

The surface of many metals (and copper is one of them), when interacting with the surrounding air and various chemicals, begins to become covered with a thin layer of oxides and oxides.

This process, which also leads to a change in the color of the metal surface, is called oxidation.

For the most part, the process of metal oxidation occurs naturally, but people have learned to cause it artificially, in industrial or home conditions, which is done to give the product an aged look.

Oxidation should not be confused with patination, a process whose essence lies in the fact that a thin layer of sulfur or chloride compounds is formed on the surface of the metal when interacting with various chemical elements. Patination, which, like oxidation, is accompanied by a change in the color of copper and bronze, can also be performed artificially using special compounds.

Copper aging occurs naturally over time or immediately when the surface is treated with any preparations.

If under natural conditions the process of oxidation and patination of copper or bronze can take years, then when using special solutions, patination occurs in a very short period of time.

The surface of a product placed in such a solution literally changes its color before our eyes, acquiring a touch of noble antiquity.

Using various chemical compositions, you can perform such procedures as blackening of copper, patination of objects made of copper and bronze, and blackening of brass in production and even at home.

Preparation for processing

Having decided to perform patination or oxidation, you should not only carefully study the question of how to age brass, bronze or blacken copper, but also provide the necessary safety measures.

The vast majority of chemical compounds that are used to carry out such procedures are very toxic and emit vapors that pose a significant danger to human health.

Therefore, to store such substances both in industrial and at home conditions, you should use vessels with well-ground stoppers, which will prevent toxic vapors from entering the surrounding air.

Keep chemicals out of the reach of children

The procedure itself, carried out to change the color of the surface of a product under the influence of chemicals on it, should be performed in a special cabinet to which exhaust ventilation is connected.

It should be borne in mind that the doors of such a cabinet should be slightly open during the process of oxidation or patination, which will ensure effective extraction of harmful vapors from its interior.

Products made of copper, brass and bronze should be thoroughly cleaned, degreased and washed in warm water before patination. After the patination or oxidation procedure itself, the treated objects are also washed and placed in sawdust to dry.

Using sawdust is a more gentle drying method, since performing such a procedure with a fabric material can damage the thin film of the formed patina, which has not yet been fixed with varnish.

In addition, using fabric after patination, it is almost impossible to efficiently remove moisture from the recesses on relief surfaces, and sawdust can easily be pulled out.

The varnished surface can be polished with a felt pad.

Changes in color of copper and its alloys from gray to black

The grey, dark gray or black color of copper and its alloys makes the appearance of the product more attractive and presentable.

To obtain these colors, the degree of saturation of which can be adjusted, you need the “liver of sulfur” composition that has been used for decades.

It got its name due to the fact that during the cooking process it must sinter, that is, turn into a caked mass.

To make such a composition for patination at home, you must perform the following steps:

one part of powdered sulfur is mixed with two parts of potash;
the resulting mixture is placed in a tin can, which then must be put on fire;
After waiting for the powder to melt and start sintering, it is necessary to maintain this process for 15 minutes.

To prepare sulfur liver you will need soda and sulfur

During the sintering process of the powder, a blue-green flame may flare up on its surface, which does not need to be knocked down, since it will not deteriorate the quality characteristics of the sulfur liver.

After sintering is completed and completely cooled, the resulting mass should be crushed to a powder state.

This powder, if placed in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid, can be stored for a long time.

In order to patina various metal alloys using liver sulfur, several basic methods are used. Method No. 1

This method involves the use of an aqueous solution of liver sulfur. It can be used to change the color of products made from the following materials:

copper;
sterling silver;
bronze and brass.

The colors that can be used to paint the surfaces of products using this method also vary:

copper and silver - purple, blue (very difficult to obtain), gray, brown-gray, black;
brass and bronze – soft golden.

Testing the solution on copper, bronze and brass gives different effects

If you did not know before how to age copper and form a durable patina film on the surface of this metal, distinguished by a rich black color, use this method. To implement it, a copper product is placed in a solution consisting of a liter of water and 1–20 grams of liver sulfur powder.

To color copper light gray, the solution is prepared according to a different recipe: 2-3 grams of sodium chloride and liver sulfur are dissolved in 1 liter of water.

A copper product is placed in the resulting solution, the color change of which should be carefully monitored.

After the color of the metal acquires the desired tone, the object to be patinated must be washed with water and dried in sawdust.

The duration of treatment of copper jewelry with a solution depends on the desired blackening effect

Method No. 2

To patina copper, you can also use a solution prepared according to the following recipe: ammonia is added to a saturated aqueous solution of copper sulfate and this is done until the liquid becomes transparent and bright blue. The cleaned and degreased product to be processed is placed in such a solution for several minutes, after which it is removed and subjected to slight heating. After such manipulations, the copper should acquire a rich black color.

Method No. 3

To use this method, which also allows you to qualitatively blacken copper even at home, the object being processed must be cleaned with fine sandpaper.

Do not touch the cleaned surface with your hands to prevent grease stains from forming on it. After preliminary preparation for patination, the object is treated with a solution of platinum chloride or completely immersed in it.

A small amount of hydrochloric acid can be added to such a solution, if it does not cause an acidic reaction.

Method No. 4

A durable oxide film, distinguished by a rich black color, can be formed on the surface of a copper product by immersing it in a composition prepared from nitric acid and copper metal. To make the color change of the copper part more intense, this solution can be further heated.

Getting a patina of other colors

To form an oxide film of a different color on copper, you can even use one of the following methods at home.

Red-brown

To obtain a red-brown oxide film, the copper product is placed for several minutes in a composition prepared from one part of copper sulfate, one part of zinc chloride and two parts of water.

Using the example of one part, you can see how the shade changes depending on the duration of stay in the solution

Range from light brown to black

To obtain such a patina, a copper object must be placed in a solution consisting of one liter of water and 20 grams of ammonium sulfide. By changing the heating temperature of the processed product before patination, you can adjust the intensity of coloring.

Light brown

To give the surface of a copper product a light brown color, it is necessary to treat it with a mixture of sodium chromium (124 g/liter), nitric (15.5 g/liter) and hydrochloric (4.65 g/liter) acids, 18% ammonium sulfide ( 3–5 g/liter). This solution is applied with a brush and left for four to five hours.

Cover the surfaces of the part until you achieve the desired shade

Range from dark to warm brown

To obtain a surface of this color, the copper part is placed in a hot solution for 5–25 minutes (90–95°

), which contains ammonium persulfate (9.25 g/liter) and caustic soda (50 g/liter). The procedure is repeated 2-3 times to achieve the desired effect.

Range from olive to brown

For patination, a copper product is placed for 10–15 minutes in a heated aqueous solution of berthollet salt (50–70 g/l), copper nitrate (40–50 g/l) and ammonium chloride (80–100 g/l).

Noble white-green

The most popular method of creating a green patina is to immerse a copper object in a composition prepared from water (1 liter), copper sulfate (50 g) and potassium permanganate (5 g).

There are many more methods that allow you to create a patina of various shades of green, brown-black, golden, golden brown with crimson tarnish and others.

How to age brass with vinegar

Using various methods of patination of copper alloys, you can achieve completely different shades

How to clean brass at home

Bronze and brass are primarily used in the production of art products, interior parts and jewelry. Before the invention of steel, these were the most popular types of metal. Over time, such items require cleaning, as they develop a greenish or black coating. You can restore brass to its original appearance at home or in a workshop.

Do-it-yourself cleaning of brass products

A freshly cast bronze object has a characteristic dark yellow color. Over time, it begins to darken, lose its shine and gradually the product becomes black. Plaque occurs as a result of the interaction of a metal surface with water or air.

Before cleaning brass or bronze at home, you should examine the item carefully. It can be all brass or alloy. Some items have a lacquered finish. Taking into account the specific composition, methods and detergents are selected.

Before cleaning, the product must be thoroughly rinsed in a solution of water and a mild washing gel. Immerse the item in a container with this composition for half an hour. Then, using a soft brush or cloth, remove all dirt, greenish deposits and blackness from it.

Only after preliminary light cleansing can you proceed to the main stage of the process.

Cleaning products for brass and bronze products

A product for effectively cleaning bronze and brass can be of plant or mineral origin. Chemical compounds and even food products are used. Not every method is suitable at home.

The product will shine again if you use a brass cleaner containing oxalic acid. You need to smear the object well with it and leave it for a while.

As a result of the reaction to the washing solution, a dark coating forms on the surface - it can be easily washed off with a brush and running water. After washing, the product should be generously sprinkled with soda.

Then rinse again and thoroughly rub until shiny.

How to clean severe darkening?

Severe darkening can be cleaned using a variety of materials. The combination of lemon juice and a pinch of boiled salt is highly effective. Among the features of this method, we note the following points:

Before cleaning, the surface is washed with clean water and then wiped with a dry cloth.
If the surface layer is varnish, you will have to remove it. This is due to the fact that during long-term use of brass, plaque can form under the varnish.
After preparing the product, you can begin cleaning. Lemon juice is mixed with table salt, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the resulting mixture.

Polished brass

A surface can only be cleaned until it shines using a combination of several methods. An example is that after applying the mixture, the surface is cleaned and treated with soft sandpaper. It is not recommended to use an abrasive that is too coarse, as this leads to deep scratches.

How to age brass at home

Before carrying out manipulations, working surfaces are put in order, then treated with a special primer from a spray can, which allows the paint to better adhere to the surface.

Patination of metal requires time and patience; we will look further at how to apply patina paint to the surface and what effect can be achieved.

Ways to give copper products an antique look

Over time, copper items lose their color and begin to take on a dark or green tint. This happens naturally during the process of oxidation, but modern designers actively promote vintage interior elements; it looks beautiful, sophisticated, and expensive.

Antique copper bowl

But to achieve a beautiful shade of patina, you don’t have to wait several years; you can age the product artificially. There are many ways to do this. You can choose any one that suits you best.

Basic Tools

The use of various aging methods involves the use of some tools or improvised means. But there are universal items that are used with any method:

Patination is the artificial aging of copper interior items

the product itself, carefully processed;
thick rubber gloves;
safety glasses for eye safety;
aging agent (vinegar, ammonia, prepared solutions, acetone, ammonia);
soap or just water for cleaning;
magnet for checking the composition;
hot treatment (hair dryer or any other heating agent);
brush;
special container (bucket, tin cans, plastic jars);
means for polishing and grinding (sponge, cloth).

Using ammonia

Before starting work, you need to process the copper item with a file (a special file for jewelry work) - such preparation helps to clean the item from dirt and put it in order. To treat with ammonia you will need: the treatment agent itself, any container with a tight-fitting lid, a cotton pad and a lid the size of it.

Table of brands of copper products of a famous antique brand

The cotton pad should be placed in a small lid, thoroughly soaked in ammonia and placed together with the copper product in an airtight container. After 10 minutes you can see how the copper item has aged. When opening the container, do not forget that you can smell a strong smell of alcohol, so it is better to use a protective bandage.

Using Vinegar

In order to age a copper item with vinegar, you need to carefully prepare it. The preparation process consists of several stages:

You can age copper in vinegar

If the copper product is covered with a layer of varnish, then it must be removed. To do this, you need to either hold the product in a container with acetone, or carefully treat it with a brush with the same product;
Next, the copper item needs to be poured with hot water and rinsed so that the varnish comes off completely;
if the copper item does not have any additional coating, then it will be enough to simply wash it with soap;
The aging process cannot be started if the product is not dry enough. To speed up drying, you can use a hair dryer, but before doing this, make sure that there are no traces of protective coating left on the copper, otherwise the copper product may catch fire.

After the preparatory stage is completed, you can begin processing with vinegar. The big advantage of this method is that you do not need to work with harmful substances and you always have vinegar on hand in the kitchen.

As with acetone, you can either dip the item in vinegar or apply it to a brush and thoroughly treat the item. Also, if you need to get a green patina, you can add a spoonful of salt to the vinegar. After the desired result is achieved, the copper item should be rinsed in warm water and gently dried with a towel.

Aging with a gray tint using sulfur liver

First you need to prepare sulfur liver. This can be done as follows:

Liver sulfur (sodium polysulfide)

mix sulfur powder and potash in a 1:1 ratio in a tin jar, put the mixture on fire;
after the mixture begins to melt and darken, the sintering process begins;
After 15 minutes, remove the tin from the heat and let the mixture cool slightly.

Now you can begin preparing the solution in order to begin patination and age the copper item. Mix 3 g of salt and 3 g of cooled sulfur liver in 1 liter of water. Mix the solution thoroughly and dip the copper product into it. When the copper has acquired the required gray tint, you can remove the product, then rinse with water and dry.

Security measures

When carrying out patination, it is necessary to observe safety precautions. After all, many of the substances used are very toxic and can be harmful to health. Therefore, it is important to follow the following rules:

Use a specially equipped cabinet for work that has a hood.
During the procedure, wear a protective suit, gloves, and goggles.
Avoid contact of used reagents with skin and eyes.
All containers must be clean for use. Do not use the same uncleaned glassware for multiple experiments.
When heating test tubes with reagents, the containers must be held so that their necks point away from you.
All experiments must be carried out above the table.
Do not leave reagent bottles open as they may tip over.
All reagents must be labeled to avoid confusion.
There should be sand in the office to be used in case of fire.

Thus, you can carry out patination yourself. But at the same time you need to act very carefully, observing safety precautions.