A customer called and gloomingly described a set of Gazzo/Animal cups to me over the phone. Upon receipt of the cups and some inspection, it would actually cost more to completely repair these cups as opposed to buying a new set of Gazzos. But being the curious one I am, I'm going to see how long it actually takes.

Based on advice he received from someone, the cups were immersed in a high salt solution in addition to chlorinated water. No No No No! One might have poured sulphuric acid over these cups. Please be careful of what advice you listen to before asking people that know. I'm sure Jim Riser, Bill Palmer or myself will be happy to help you with "safer" methods of speeding up the patina process. I for one can't use oxidizers due to allergies of even being around just the fumes, but there are other ways if you are willing to give it a bit of time.

When you are investing a considerable amount of money into a good set of cups, you want to be careful how you treat them, dumping them in salt and chlorinated water is a No No No! I think I said that, but want to kill this suggestion in case anyone else is considering this. To give you an idea of what this combination can do to a set of Gazzo cups, imagine taking a metal chisel to your cup as it is spinning on a lathe, the salt will react with the chlorine and then react with the copper, leaving pot hole size pits if not holes in 065/080 copper.

I'm now off to the shop to try and stop the oxidation process. Just wanted people to be aware of what certain chemical combinations react badly with copper, this one particular combination in general. Oh, these poor Gazzos!

Jake

Oh, Man!

Ouch! and I thought I had problems ;-)

Just another example on why the search engine here at the Café is so valuable.

Jake,
Just out of interest, any chance of posting a picture of these cups..??

Tom

There are some wonderful polishes available to clean cups, but very few really good patinizing compounds. I found one a few weeks ago on eBay called "Tanfastic," which I used to restore the patina to an old cup. It took me a long time to figure out how to use it, but it is very effective. And if you follow instructions (repeat) if you follow instructions, you won't damage your cups.

But the best way of all is to allow the cups to patinize naturally.

I was going to post the same thing but wasn't sure if I could stand looking at a set of pitted cups. I would be interested in seeing what Jake can do with these though.

Would like to see a set of before and after pics.

I'll be happy to post some before, during and after pix on the RNT II site when I'm done. These poor Gazzos have some serious cosmetic surgery coming.

I feel very bad for the owner of these cups as he only followed the suggestion of someone else. I'll make another post after I start the restoration on these, right now they're soaking in an anti-oxidant so any oxidation still occuring under the roll of the mouth bead is sure to be stopped. They'll soak in the sollution for about a week.

Jake

Hmmm. I'd like to see the damage done to the cups. How long were they in the damaging solution? I've done metal restoration for some time and I would take a different approach but I don't know the full situation. I've restored severe chemical damage on brass and copper and it takes a few hours even with a cavity like the roll on a cup . Again I don't know the extent of the damage but it sounds odd to have to have it in solution soooo long. I have restored shipwreck stuff with electrolysis that takes months but but short term chemical exposure never poses that kind of problems. But yet again this may be an odd ball thing.
Rich

I have a feeling there was some hydrochloric acid involved in this. That stuff is really rough, especially on copper.

I've seen damage from hydrochloric acid vapor that actually took the chrome plating off a microphone stand. It's not a normal thing, but it's really dangerous stuff, in its concentrated form.