Create a patina on brass

Very interesting, thanks for taking the time to blog the technique.

Robert

You can get ‘Letraset’ type sheets to run through your laser printer and print off the entire quote, rub it on and voila no lining up and everything is spaced nicely, with whatever font you have on your computer. I supose you could even do graphics with this stuff.

Did you lacquer or somehow seal the ‘shiny bits’ so they don’t follow suit with the tarnished areas?

Thanks for posting this.

-- "Checking for square? What madness is this! The cabinet is square because I will it to be so!" Jeremy Greiner LJ Topic#20953 2011 Feb 2

I always enjoy your videos especially man vs wood

Very cool. As always, very entertaining. I’ve never seen this technique before, and now I’m thinking of how I can incorporate this into one of my projects.

Oh great, another project on my list of many. Damn you Steve!! (kidding, of course)
Cheers!

-- I'm a Fungi --

@Mark: Cool! I am so old school…I never knew about that. I’ll look for them.

I just lacquered everything: patina, shiny bits and MDF after I was all done.

-- Entertainment for mere mortal woodworkers. http://www.WoodworkingForMereMortals.com

Nice instructional Steve. I also like the fact that unlike David Marks, you show us how to do it with common household products. Thanks dude!

-- Backer boards, stop blocks, build oversized, and never buy a hand plane--

@cranesgonewild: Get on it dude! I think there are a lot of ways to incorporate patina into a wood project. My first thought was to use it on inset panels on a pie safe. Or maybe the top of a box?

-- Entertainment for mere mortal woodworkers. http://www.WoodworkingForMereMortals.com

@rance: I can’t afford shopping at woodworking stores!

-- Entertainment for mere mortal woodworkers. http://www.WoodworkingForMereMortals.com

Great idea, Steve. Thanks for sharing. If I can figure out how to use ammonia without triggering my asthma, I want t o try this.

-- The nicer the nice, the higher the price!

Cool! I asked Martin about a metalworking forum awhile ago, but he was busy enough with the three he had. I like Mark’s LetraSet suggestion. A couple of others:

If you use household bleach, you will get a much lighter color- turquoise- than the ammonia. It also takes a lot longer than the ammonia to turn the color.

Optionally, you can go to the beach and get a bucket of sand to soak your project in. It’ll take a long time, but it’ll look like stuff you see in videos about shipwrecks on the ocean floor.

If you live near an ocean beach, you may already know this- if you leave copper alloys out in the weather, they’ll gain a patina of their own, given a long enough time.

The industrial grade ammonia Steve used will turn copper dark green in a few hours. The brass, being an alloy with tin, didn’t do that, it was lighter. Also, the water spray gave it that really nice mottled effect. I made a project about 6 years ago using strong ammonia, and, like Tiny, was nearly overcome by the fumes. Be really careful with it, it’s really bad news.

You can also print out what you want on a laser printer and use a clothes iron to transfer the black to the metal. In this case, you can using any design you want, not just letters, which, using this method, you would have to print backwards.

You can use a brass or copper pipe and skip the epoxy and the ABS pipe parts, though the metal pipe is considerably more expensive.

GarageWoodworks:

No, the fumes do the work. If you dip or spray the metal it doesn’t work.

Dear God, this sounds like chemistry!

So while I can’t speak to that, it was just pointed out to me that I misspelled Jane Austen. Wow. Even my wife didn’t catch my errant “i”.

Well, you see…I did it to give it that homespun, down-home feel…yeah…

-- Entertainment for mere mortal woodworkers. http://www.WoodworkingForMereMortals.com

A while back, I came across a place that sells a bunch of chemicals with suggested mixes for different color patinas but I haven’t tried it out yet.

Steve, you seem like a man of adventure – maybe you can whip up some of these carbon-tetra-deadly mixtures and see what happens…er, try not to blow up the shop.

http://www.sciencecompany.com/patinas/patinaformulas.htm#17

Cheers,
Richard

-- "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it...It's the hard that makes it great."

Since someone mentioned bleach, I’d like to warn everyone to never mix ammonia and bleach.
That creates some potentially deadly fumes.

Nice little quickie ;-)) Can’t wait to see the next successful succession.

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence