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More Fun With Brass

jbtsax

Distinguished Member
Distinguished Member
I have been experimenting with creating different finishes for vintage saxophones for a long time. I recently discovered a company that specializes in chemicals that produce different finishes on all types of metals. Their patina formulas that turn brass several different colors are designed to be used at room temperature which is a big plus.

The photos below show some examples of just one of their formulas. The first step is to produce a "brushed" satin finish on the key using the 3M fine wheel in a bench motor which takes under a minute. Then the key is immersed in the solution for a measured period of time. It is then rinsed with clear water and dried with a paper towel. Then the finish is "highlighted" using light strokes in one direction with the 3M very fine pad. The buffed finish key is shown just as a comparison. When dipped and highlighted, the buffed key is virtually identical to the ones with the satin finish.

The answer to where I am going with all of this is simple. Unfortunately saxophones that have been buffed and re-lacquered have been given an undeserved bad reputation in the sax world. This process provides a way to give a vintage saxophone an attractive and even finish after stripping whatever lacquer remains without giving it a negative label that takes away from its value. Until something better comes along a carnauba wax finish is used to protect the new finish and impede the natural tarnishing process that raw brass undergoes.







 
Very nice work.

Were you able to control the darkening so as to match a honey lacquer in a repair?
 
Thanks for the compliment. The patina chemicals that I am using do not produce a perfectly uniform finish as you can see in the photos. Because of that it would be very difficult to try to match the even color of a lacquered finish. HOWEVER, I may have stumbled onto another way to do that entirely by mistake.

In an effort to degrease the keys completely before immersing in the chemical I have been using a small ultrasonic cleaner that has a heating element. I had always used Dawn dish detergent because it worked so well. My wife is allergic to many cleaning products so she buys a concentrate called Red Juice from a company called Jeff Campbell's Clean Team. I have been using that to clean my shop floor, so I thought I would try a bit of the concentrate in my ultrasonic.

The rest of the story is all of the keys came out of the ultrasonic not with the pale yellow color of brushed brass, but a beautiful golden hue. Needless to say I had to re-brush all of the keys and start over for my presentation, but it is something that could be useful down the road. If I get the time I will run a few keys through that process and take some photos of the color change.
 
Disappointing experiment

I came up with an experiment to test wax finishes used on raw brass to "protect" the finish. Four identical keys were given a satin brushed finish then cleaned and de-greased. One was given an application of Renaissance Wax, another was given an application of Carnauba Wax, and the third and fourth were left untreated.

Three of the keys were then suspended in a bucket about 4" above a half gallon of undiluted ammonia and covered with a lid. After 1 hour, the keys were removed and compared with the control key that had not been exposed to the ammonia fumes. As you can see in the photos below the Carnauba treated key fared slightly better than the others, but neither of the wax finishes provided much protection from the ammonia.

It remains to be seen if this is a valid test of the protection afforded the metal by the standard wax treatments as the metal was exposed to the harshest of environments. A sax player would hardly play his unlacquered saxophone standing in a vat of ammonia---at least not for very long. Still my hope was that at least one of the wax finishes would have kept the atmosphere at bay in a more credible fashion.





 
Well That Was Dumb

In doing a bit more research, I discovered that ammonia is one of the most effective agents in removing hardened wax. In an effort to "speed up" the tarnish process, to test the effectiveness of the coatings on the brass, I used the agent that no wax can withstand. Back to square one. At least I proved that you are never too old to do dumb things, and at my age one more dumb thing isn't going to matter in light of all those that came before it.
 
At least we learned that Mothers is pretty tough stuff.
 
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