I Need A Chemical To Turn Patina Copper Back To Bright Penny Color

genecarp

Ed, i just came across this in my files, interesting products, I would give these guys a call for sure. G

http://www.sciencecompany.com/patina...naformulas.htm

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Tom M

I thought of this thread this mourning Fox news had unique cleaning solutions around the house. They mention ketchup as a copper cleaner.........must be the tomatoes like the taco sauce.

rastagator

try finding a product with 'sodium hydroxide' in it; test a small spot maybe with a little (EZ Off Oven Cleaner) as it has sodium hydroxide. I have commercial trucking washing detergent where the main ingredient is sodium hydroxide and it makes old copper pennies 'almost' new again.

naptown CR

I just did that never heard of it but it took about a minute and the penny looked new. this penny was brown and not green. maybe a spray bottle and a trip to the costco sams whatever to get a couple bottles of tabasco and try spraying it on in a thin coat may work. try a small test patch.

ccmoto

ketchup works. we had a bunch of material for a copper roof get hit by overspray from acid brick wash on a commercial building. ketchup cleaned it up perfect and fast too.

JamesKB2

All those sound acidic.

My wife cleans the copper here at home with "Wright's Copper Cream". It does a fast job and brings it right back to shiny new. She has a large collection of bowls, cups, shakers, you name it. My kitchen is strewn with copper. The cleaning lasts about three months before she wants it back to new looking again.

I'd second the notion of a lacquer coating on it, if you can find the right product. Most of the aforementioned doo dads had some lacquer coating on it that lasted quite long before she stripped it off with the cleaner. It took some effort to get it off too!

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I will build you whatever you want, just draw it on the back of a big enough check.

knucklehead

I have heard that urine works. Seriously

Copper Nerd

No, that turns it green!

Copper Nerd

The acidity of Ketchup and Tabasco work the same way on copper - and it does work, but that's an awful lot of trips to Taco-Bell. Bill Zahner recommends 'giving it a sponge bath' with 6 parts phosphoric acid, 1 part nitric acid, and 50% distilled water and then to use a bonding agent to create a paste. It should have a ph between 1.0 and 1.5. ...if you search for these chemicals on the internet you might end up on the terror suspect list.

Almost every time I have had a customer ask me this, it has been less expensive to tear off the old roof, scrap the copper (and use the cash to offset the cost of the new roof), and install a new copper roof. By the time you figure your labor costs to clean a copper roof and keep the work area safe from the acid or other harsh cleaning agent, it is usually cheaper to go new.

The International Copper Development Association has only approved one substance to coat copper to prevent it from turning. It is called Incralac. I have seen other lacquers work pretty well, but I wouldn't give any guarantees. The copper has to be perfectly clean or you might have fingerprints that turn black under the laquer coating.

PA woodbutcher

You are a copper nerd aren't you Welcome

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'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.' - Ronald Reagan

abacab

I'd give it six months to a year before it's back to the color it is now. One rain and it will already be streaked. I used to scrub a large copper fountain in a fancy furtniture store about every 3 months using some kind of acid (I was just a kid, don't know what it was). The acid did not work well, it took a lot of scrubbing.