Patina aging experiment

[Paul M]

It has been mentioned in various orcaonline threads a few times in the past that the finish on a polished-up reel can be easily aged if you "bury it in the garden for a while". This has been on my mind for some time and I finally got around to trying this technique. I chose to bury 2 reels for a full month to see what would happen. We have had warm temperatures and had several days of heavy rain, so I expected to see significant transformations. I exhumed the reels today. Shown below are the before and after pics.

One is a nickel plated brass (NPB) Hendryx that someone apparently scoured before I got it. The other is an old brass plate reel that I polished before burial for the purpose of this experiment.

BEFORE:


THE GARDEN GRAVEYARD:


EXHUMED REELS:


RINSED OFF:


FINDINGS:

Even though I marked the grave, they were harder to find than I expected LOL!

I anticipated that the all-brass reel would darken significantly but it was not affected all that much. In fact most of the added "patina" can be wiped off easily. I was not surprised that the NPB reel shows no signs of accelerated patina.

One very negative impact is that grit got in between the side plate and the spool so handle rotation on one reel became stuck and the other sounds and feels "gritty".

CONCLUSION:
Burying a reel in the garden (for a month) does not seem to age brass reel patina, it causes harm to the mechanism and is not recommended for any purpose.

[Brian F.]

Nice documented experiment, Paul. I vaguely remember someone mentioning that. The "aging" process seems to happen way too fast for me here but it probably takes too long for your purposes. Living a few hundred miles from an active volcano and surrounded by ocean does have its drawbacks....or positives if looking at if from your perspective.

[Jonathan P. Kring]

Paul: Perhaps if you had left them in the ground a little longer and perhaps added a little fertilizer, they might have sprouted and increased the size of your collection? Jon

[john elder]

Think pH....

[Harry Verdurchi]

Try it again but leave out the Embalming .

[Don Champion]

I have heard that if you put the reel in a plastic container, on a raised object above the bottom, and add damp sulphur, and put it in sunlight for a few days that it will jump start the process. Never tried it.

[Midway Tommy D]

Entombment and exhumation seem to require a lot of time and effort when all you need is this: http://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/a ... -oz-bottle

I do find it quite interesting and ironic, though, that we, as a society, have opted to, in certain instances, consider rust, tarnish, verdigris, mold, sulfuric acid rain effects, etc. desirable qualities, and actually devise and manufacture products to replicate them while at the very same time producing products to, in similar instances, remove them to maintain the integrity of the original creation.

To each his own, I guess. Just more evidence that beauty's all in the eyes of the beholder.

Tom

[Steve]

What's the rush?
The two reels shown below are very similar British single-action click reels probably well over 150 years old. The reel on the left is shown just after it was cleaned, but not polished, by the method described above. The reel on the right looked just as bright and shiny after it was cleaned several years ago. However, it has developed a nice, even, "natural" patina by sitting on a display shelf since then. A deep patina is not necessarily indicative of great age.

(from http://www.antiquefishingreels.info/cleaning.htm)

[Paul M]

Following up on Mr. Elder's comment I tried to test the soil PH of this graveyard. I put a few scoops of soil into a clean Mason jar and poured in distiller water (typical PH 6.0-6.5) to bring the level close to the top. Then I shook it vigorously and let it sit. That was about about 10 days ago. When I returned from my week long fishing trip the soil and water had settled. I see that I have a sandy loam soil based on the stratification of the settled soil (thin layer of clay on top with various layers of silt and sand below).

I took my acquarium PH test kit and tested the clarified water in the jar. Based on 2 tests using different chemicals, the water PH is about 7.5, thus alkaline.


The jar of soil and water just after it was shaken and my acquarium water PH test kit


One chemical results in blue=7.6 at the top of its range and the other results in yellow=7.4 at the bottom of its range. Thus the soil has a PH of around 7.5.


A nice Brown taken with a Chubby Chernobyl on the Madison River near Ennis, MT