Good morning Jeff, what I would do is: 1- test on pieces of iron (several I would say, in each piece vary the ingredients for the patina) pretending to be the body of your car and see the results. 2- taking into account that we are talking about iron, the best result would be to use ferrous oxide, clearly no turquoise, blue or green color will come out, but beautiful shades of different reddish colors. 3- If you are willing and have time and commitment to achieve these results in your VW, what I would do is buy copper brass sheets and coat your body with it and then carry out the procedure indicated by Rena K. Particularly I am a little more daring and I usually use nitric acid and fire technique to skate metals (with all the care and precautions of course). Greetings from Argentina

My pleasure, Kim! 🙂

Natural verdigris is usually a basic copper carbonate. Verdigris derived from acetic acid (vinegar)and salt will also include basic copper chloride and copper (II) acetate. All of these are bioactive toxins. You biggest risk of absorption is when it comes in contact with mucous membranes (mouth, nose, and eyes). You can reduce your risk of exposure by wearing a mask, gloves, and protective glasses when making the patina and then properly sealing the piece before handling and wearing. If you do all that you should be fine.

Wonderful, John!

Hi Denise 🙂 Thank you so much for this advice which I have written down along with the patinating instructions. Please do me a favour and ask your chemist friend if I can neutralise the salt/vinegar solution with bicarbonate of soda? I use this to neutralise ferric nitrate when I do photoetching onto sterling silver. I’ll do a web search to try and find an answer . . . I may be gone for some time . . . 🙂

Hi Karen! Go to my page on Homemade Patina Precautions, and scroll down that page to see .

Scroll down through the section called “Properly Seal Items After the Patina Process”. And actually, for safety’s sake, you should read everything on that Homemade Patina Precautions page.

In the Vinegar and Salt Patina post, I have this link to my Homemade Patina Precautions page, here

Jodi, thanks for asking! In my Homemade Patina Precautions post, you’ll find the info you’re looking for. 🙂

Eric, thanks so much for letting us know how you used this patina idea, and your results. I love hearing that it was part of a father-son project! 🙂

Yiota, thanks for asking! Whenever you wonder whether a technique will work with a particular type of component, first do a test run on a small scrap or sample of it (in this case, on a scrap of sterling silver sheet or wire). Then you can see how the technique will (or won’t) work on the sample, without ruining the actual piece. Another benefit of doing the test run on a scrap first – you’ll probably discover some things about the technique that will help you get better results when you do the technique on your actual component!

Here is what I learned from my friend who is a chemist: The main route to copper toxicity is inhalation and ingestion. You are making copper acetate when you treat copper with acetic acid (vinegar). It’s very important to not pour the solutions down the drain as copper has a high toxicity to fish and invertebrates. If one was doing work with copper patina in an industrial setting, all contaminated solutions would be packaged and shipped in drums/bottles as toxic waste. It is difficult as a civilian to deal with toxic waste.

Ronda, thanks for asking! Yes, you can put more than one item in the batch. Generally it’s best to make sure the pieces aren’t touching each other, so each gets exposed to the patina solution without anything blocking parts of it.

Hi Pedro, thanks for your kind words!

You can also color metals with alcohol inks (see my tutorial, Coloring Metal with Alcohol Ink, and with Gilders Paste.

We have additional patina tutorials in this category here: Patinas and Oxidizing.

I always recommend that you first test patinas / oxidizing / other coloring methods on a scrap of the metal you’ll be using for your final project, so you’ll have a good idea of how the results might look before you do the procedure on your finished piece.

Once again thanks for your time and nice posts! Keep it up!

Cheers,
Pedro

Hi Thom, thanks for asking! I’ve never boiled lacquer off of metal, so I don’t really know what results you might get. The best way to find out is to experiment with a scrap piece of your lacquered copper that you wouldn’t mind if it got messed up – and use it as the “guinea pig” to test the procedure you’re considering. If you decide to give it a try, please let us know how it works! 🙂

Hi Jeff, thanks for asking. I have never used this patina on a vehicle. Since your car is not made of copper, I don’t think it would work. And since it’s a vintage car, I would not experiment on it if I were you. 🙂 However, you might go to a salvage yard and get a piece of an old VW Beetle (a door or whatever), and experiment with the patina on that if you like.

Hi Nika, yes, please share the name your sealer. Thanks! I agree, I’ve had excellent results with regular acrylic sealing sprays made for general crafting purposes (available in craft stores).

Don’t stop doing what you’re doing!

Miguel P.

Hi Meenakshi, I have not tried this patina on stone or terracotta. My guess is that it’s not likely to work. However, the best way to find out is to use a scrap piece of stone or terracotta that you don’t mind experimenting on, and try this patina (or another patina process) on it and see what happens! 🙂

You’re very welcome, Mary! Thank you for your lovely comment. I’m glad to hear you’ve found so much value in this patina tutorial! I agree, high school science would have been more interesting with projects like this one. 🙂

Be sure to see the other patina / oxidizing tutorials here – there are several more that use ordinary household items.

Get your mad jewelry science lab ready! 🙂

My salt turned wildly blue within a few hours, but when I wiped away a bit of the salt, I saw that the metal itself hadn’t started acquiring a patina at all yet.

So I dabbed a bit more vinegar and salt on the wiped-away spot and let the patina develop undisturbed for another day or two (I don’t remember now exactly how long I left it).

So if I were you I would try it again – and this time leave it on for 2 days.

Also, as I mentioned above, this patina is fragile and crumbly. So rinse the salt mixture off your pendant VERY gently under a thin stream of water, and don’t scrub.

Then let your pendant air-dry undisturbed (you can blow-dry it to speed things up), and spray each side of the completely-dry pendant with 3 light coats of clear lacquer (drying each coat thoroughly before spraying the next coat).

One other possibility: Some copper products (including pre-made pendants and other jewelry components) are sometimes lacquered by the manfacturer – and because of the lacquer, the metal won’t acquire a patina.

I hope this helps, Gabs! Please let me know how your patina turns out! 🙂

hugs x
Crystelle