Anyone here know about polishing copper?

bright_Spark

bright_Spark

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I am looking for advice for a personal project that I am undertaking, I have an old copper item that needs properly cleaning from age and weathering then polising. Quite a prestige project so advice would be appreciated, I don't want to wreck it.
 
My mum always used Brasso for her copper pans:
Ingredient Information
  • Water.
  • Calcium Carbonate.
  • Oxalic Acid Dihydrate.
  • Pumice.
  • Tall Oil.
  • Isopropyl Alcohol.
  • Ammonium Hydroxide.
  • Aluminum Magnesium Silicate.
 
I do know the old brasso and old newspapers (if you can get them anymore) worked a treat on really expensive copper pans. Polish them up like shes in the army, wax on wax off esk!
 
Bob Rathbone said:
Polishing is the easy bit, keeping the shine after is the big issue.
Click to expand...
Yes I was wondering that myself, in our county we have a few streets full of copper tops around the minster and all of them are gleaming, I found out the way they are kept like this is once per year they get a coat of carabuna wax on them and it stops the oxidisation of the copper. To be honest though the aging look of copper with its green hue is actually growing on me and I am not sure which I now prefer. I am going to polish this lamp up and give it a coat of wax then I will probably just let it age naturally. I am not sure as my OCD will probably kick in and I will end up polishing it again.
 
There used to be a workshop in Glasgow that did brass and copper cleaning, they used a row of big polishing wheels, layered up fabric wheels like jewellers use but much bigger, grinding paste looked like a lump of soap, when you put that against the moving wheel it melted some onto the wheel, then buff away down the grades/wheels, the last wheel was softer and they did the same with a block of wax, the speed of the wheel melted on sort of thing, slows down the oxidisation and leaves a waxy sheen.

You could probably do the same with a decent car hand buffer, the blocks, paste and wax you can get from any jewellery supplier.
 
Alan22 said:
There used to be a workshop in Glasgow that did brass and copper cleaning, they used a row of big polishing wheels, layered up fabric wheels like jewellers use but much bigger, grinding paste looked like a lump of soap, when you put that against the moving wheel it melted some onto the wheel, then buff away down the grades/wheels, the last wheel was softer and they did the same with a block of wax, the speed of the wheel melted on sort of thing, slows down the oxidisation and leaves a waxy sheen.

You could probably do the same with a decent car hand buffer, the blocks, paste and wax you can get from any jewellery supplier.
Click to expand...
sounds like the way to go, I am almost giving up and thinking of painting it black
 
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