FREE Cleaning Bronze Antiques Safely Tips - without causing any damage

If you are the proud owner of some beautiful bronze antiques, you are going to need to know how to take care of them and properly clean them without causing any damage. The trick here of course is to destroy the verdigris, dirt and patina without damaging the actual antique. First off, it needs to be said that if you have previously cleaned your pieces of verdigris and found that dark spots still remained underneath it, you need to leave them there and not try to remove those spots, because it will retarnish very quickly. You can still brighten the metal or tarnish it even, as well as apply some artificial patina to some or all of the surface, according to your preferences using a cotton swab.

That being said, if you have tried copper soap and water, common baking soda and chemicals of which you cant even pronounce the ingredients, there are a few more things for you to try to get your bronze antiques as clean as they were the day they were made. You might find that immersing your pieces in hydrochloric acid or a diluted nitric acid will do the trick, but you must be careful you need to remove the pieces frequently at first so that they are not damaged, but you can then remove them at longer intervals after the effects have been judged.

If you use any type of an acid treatment for cleaning your bronze antiques or those of any type of base metal such as copper, you must neutralize them by a single short immersion in sodium hydroxide (use caution, it is caustic)or in an ammonia solution. If you want to remove false patina, you first have to absolutely be sure that it actually is false patina that covers your bronze antiques. If you are absolutely sure that it is, you can use 000 steel wool with a 5% hydrochloric acid solution, then you need to rinse with water and scrub them with a hard brush if needed. Then you can soak for 30 minutes at a time, changing the water that frequently and see if that does the trick for your bronze antiques.

Finally, if all else has failed, you can try a reduction with zinc and sodium hydroxide (be careful, caustic!). After rinsing for about a day or so with it, you will need to soak your piece in hot water that is changed several times, followed by drying it at about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Any dust that is left on your bronze antiques can be cleaned off with a blower.

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