Reader question: Can I get a living finish to look the way it used to?
Hi! I was reading your blog piece on patinas of Feb.10 2009 but silly me I cannot figure out how to find the next day (you said it would be continued tomorrow.)
I impulse bought a hammered fired big bathtub on Craigslist for a song, and am designing my toilet. Due to area limitations, I will use the tub additionally as a bath, in the back of a wall of heavy glass doors. I read nowadays on another web page that the dark fired end will flip as it is a residing end unless I deal with monthly with beeswax. I'm looking to decide if I want to simply let it go into its living end and revel in that evolution or deal with it now. It's been within the storage for a few months and I word that wherein a drip of water got on it it's far inexperienced patina'd. Do if it is viable to convey it lower back to a dark fired end when I allow it move green and past? I am chemically touchy so I wouldn't need to apply caustic chemicals to do so.
The problem with buying things for a music on Craig's List is that you haven't any idea in which some thing's been. Seriously, unless you can discover the call of the manufacturer and phone them, you're capturing inside the dark. That bath seems to be copper from that photograph and based totally on the truth that it advanced a inexperienced shade in response to a water drip. But beyond my assumption that you're coping with a copper bathtub, I haven't a clue whether or not or now not your tub's been patina-d or spray painted to appearance the way it does.
So here are a few things I know about patinas and living finishes. I wrote a five-part series on this topic in February of '09 and those posts are here:
So What the Devil's a "Living Finish" Anyway?
No Really, What's a Living Finish?
Patinas on a Budget
The Peoples' Faucetry
All Good Things Must End: My Last Post on Faucets for a While
In a nutshell, metals like copper are reactive. That means they react to chemicals in their environments. Copper usually reacts to acids and alkilis to form a variety of chlorides, sulphides and carbonates known collectively as verdigris. Verdigris is composed of copper carbonate or copper chloride primarily and those chemicals make up the green patina most people associate with copper. However, not all patinas on copper are green and not all patinas are the result of natural, chemical processes.
That's a lot of chemistry for somebody who says she's chemically sensitive, whatever that means, but reality has a way of intruding on the best-laid plans.
Pure copper develops a patina in what is essentially a system of degradation. Patinas are the symptom of that decay however they also serve as a defensive surface. A patina-d floor layer on copper seals off the copper from the outdoor international and the decay stops. Remove the patina and the decay starts offevolved again till it paperwork a brand new patina then it stops again. Repeat this technique for a thousand years or so and your copper object will disappear.
The confusion with all of this comes from the imprecise language used to describe patinas. In the commercial sense, a patina is a surface treatment of a metal. The same word gets used to describe a patina that occurs naturally and a patina that's applied. Copper left out in the rain and elements will eventually turn green in reaction to oxygen in air and water. The brown color on the tub in the photo got there as a result of some chemical or several chemicals and pigments being applied to its surface.
Whether or now not its a dwelling finish is a characteristic of it both having or no longer having a clear coat on its floor. Applying a clear coat stops the chemical reaction using the patina. Not applying a clean coat lets in the patina to evolve.
Don't waste your time applying beeswax. Use polyurethane instead. It lasts forever (more or less) and beeswax will have its own effect on copper over time. Just because one material comes from a bee and another material was developed in a lab doesn't make beeswax a better sealer, nor is it automatically benign. Whatever you end up doing, never scrub your copper tub because you'll disturb either the patina or the clear coat preserving the patina.
So to answer your question, as soon as your bath starts offevolved to exchange colour, it might not ever pass back to what it become whilst you acquire it.