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Homemade patina recipes?  

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I am interested in using typical household products to making my Patinas, instead of buying chemicals.

Joe Troup
hobbyist - Apple Valley, CA, USA

When you say "typical household products" do you mean fruit juices and generic chemicals like vinegar and bleach and ammonia, Joe? If you are talking about proprietary household cleaners, the problem is you have no idea what is in them or why, and they can change at any time the manufacturer decides. To apply unknown chemicals for purposes for which they were not intended would be dangerous and environmentally risky.

Why not start us off with a patina that you have discovered so we can get the flavor of what you're talking about? What color does it generate and what metal does it work on? Thanks!

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

Hi Joe

I work with copper and use salt, vinegar and cloudy ammonia to produce different patinas. You can spray your item with vinegar, sprinkle it with salt and put it in a sealed container with a dish of cloudy ammonia overnight. Next day, rinse the salt mixture off, allow to dry and you should have a blue patina on a dark background. I also bury pieces in sawdust dampened with vinegar, this gives an interesting effect but less colourful. Tim McCreight's book "The Complete Metalsmith" has some other patina recipes using common ingredients.

Best of luck!

Liz Turnbull
- Denmark, Western Australia

I gave a bronze sculpture to one of my children which I sculped years ago of Don Quixote. Some how the sword he holds in his raised right hand was broken off and my son wants to replace it .He has some good ideas as to forming the sword out of a strip of copper, and re-attaching it. He wants to make the sword with the same color like the rest of the bronze. He asked me what the patina was. I told him that my best recollection it was Liver Of Sulphur [linked by editor to product info at MisterArt]. I do not want him to get involved using that stuff.
Is there any household stuff he could ?
Thank you,

John Daunt
Sculptor - Pasadena Ca. La County

January , 2009 Hi, John. These days you can buy liver of sulphur as a reasonably dilute liquid, and it is possible that it may have less baggage than the stuff you remember. But it may also be possible to use crushed hard boiled eggs as a source of sulphur dioxide, although obviously the reaction with metal is far less controlled. If you type "blacken copper" into our search engine you will see a dozen or more threads on ways to darken copper. Good luck. Regards, Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey