Create patina on pewter

A. Hi Dennis. Leave out "beer" and probably "stein" & "lid" and just search for "aging pewter" and you probably won't have all those people trying to sell you beer steins, and instead will find threads like this one where Goran tries to directly answer your question :-)

Good luck.

Regards,

A. The book you've seen recommended here is for patination of copper and brass, not pewter. But check out letter 12714. Although it's about silver, not pewter, I'd conjecture that the sulfide from eggs will tarnish pewter too.

A. You can use this solution for black coloring of tin and pewter: 200 gm. iron chloride, water 1 lit. The article is immersed in solution!

A. Instead of solution from my first letter (which is simple and ingredient is easy available) you can try one of these two recipes:

BLACK FOR TIN
molybdenic acid........7,5 gm
ammonium chloride.....30 gm
H2O..........1 lit.
Hot immersion(60-80 °C)

black for tin 2
bismuth nitrate........5 gm
nitric acid..........50 ccm
tartaric acid [on eBay or Amazon].........80 gm

Antiquing Pipe Organ Pipes

Q. I have a hundred year old pipe organ in my home. Some of the prospect pipes were so badly damaged that I had new ones made to the same specifications. The problem is that the new ones are nice and shiny and don't match the 100 year-old ones. Could anyone offer any advice on how I could treat the pipes to make them less shiny?

They are made out of a mixture of I believe 70% tin and 30% lead. If you think of the difference between a new tin can and an old one that has been washed up on the beach and out in the sun for years then you can imagine the difference between these pipes.

Any ideas highly appreciated.

Ed. note: a photo would sure help

Q. To be clear, Is the chemical Goran Budija refers to in his solution iron(II) chloride or iron(III) chloride?

A. Hi I just saw your question on patinas for pewter. I have successfully used a product called Novacan Black patina.
It is a product used in the stained glass field to darken the came. It comes in a form for tin based metals and for lead based metals. Choose what is appropriate for your use. I just finished a pewter sculpture today and painted it on, rinsed it off and went over where I wanted my highlights with a 00 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon] pad. I came out BEAUTIFUL!

Good luck I hope this helps. It sure beats trying to mix your own!

A. Hi, Bradford. I'm not sure that there are "colorful" patinas for pewter. That is, there may be no reagents that will turn the metals in pewter red or green or blue. I believe that what is often done instead is the article is "painted" with a copper-based patinating solution.

Alternately, you cn probably dye it with metal dye / alcohol ink [metal dye / alcohol ink on eBay or Amazon] Regards,

Q. Thank you Ted. By painting with a copper based patinating solution do you mean the paints that have an acrylic base with copper particles in suspension that come in various grades of copper? I understand that they can be chemically colored while still wet (not totally dried)

A. Hi, Bradford. That may work just fine, but what I was actually referring to was copper-based patina solutions like Jax -->

Good luck.

Regards,

Hi Tony. The MSDS (material safety data sheet) should help you on that question, but I think the actual issue is that unplated zinc is not a very satisfactory material for jewelry because of its susceptibility to corrosion from fingerprints and sweat.

Regards,

A. Try next download free booklet on metal colouring and plating, there you can find some pewter and tin coloring formulas: attachments.wetpaintserv.us/ZLSnLKosv0l3CnE9hGDi7w488720 ⇩.
Hope it helps and good luck!

Ed. note Jan 2017: Although wetpaintserv.us was a legitimate site when Goran posted this, it is currently a malware site. DON'T GO THERE!! Goran has been kind enough to upload his booklet to https://www.finishing.com/library/budija/budija.pdf.

Goran Budija Thank you SO much for this information! Something I have been needing for years.

Thanks
This looks pretty comprehensive
I will test this over the next few months
many thanks

A. Hi Steve. My question is why do you assume that the bowl is made of pewter? It seems to me that it is made of brass with nickel or tin or silver plating which the cleaning has removed. You could try rubbing it with a silvering compound;.

if it is brass, then silver should adhere to the yellowish area. If it does, you would have the option of rubbing off the existing finish and redoing it with the silvering compound. Good luck.

Regards,

"The Dress"
-- gold & white or
was it blue & black?

A. Hi again Steve. I appreciate the photos but even still it's very difficult to correctly perceive colors when there are no familiar objects in the picture to establish a base line ... and all the more so when trying to photograph shiny objects which reveal more about their background than themselves (what color is a mirror?).

So my question remains what evidence is there which makes you continue to believe that the bowl is made of pewter rather than brass?

Regards,

Pewter

A. Hi John. I am not seeing radical changes in the composition of pewter over time. From my reading it seems that pewter has always been 90%+ tin with the balance mostly antimony. Bismuth has replaced lead, and silver has replaced cadmium where necessary as a grain refiner, and there is sometimes a little copper in it, but the changes just don't sound substantial enough to me to render the older darkening solutions unworkable.

Have you actually tried them and they don't work, or what is the situation? Thanks!

Regards,