De-zincification
When you take a close scrutiny at the photo on the left, you can see a slightly textured pitting. This is a sign of very old original brass.
This may indicate a condition called de-zincification. This is when the
zinc, through age, separates from the copper in the brass, causing pitting and
pink staining. This happens with age and is hurried up if, in the past, a
polish with ammonia in 
it
has been used. When we receive items in this tarnished state (as in the
photo to the right), the first thing we do is put them through a chemical
cleaning process to remove this extremely hard tarnish. We have to be extremely
careful with the cleaning process and (unlike electroplaters) only remove enough
of the tarnish to facilitate the polishing process. Until this is done we
have no idea of the condition of the brass, or whether the items are restorable
or not. Another problem that arises is very fine stress cracks, which only
show up after the chemical cleaning process.
Contact Kathy
for
your restorations
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