my penny work

[bufaloeletric]

here is the before during and after pics of a penny ive been working on. notice how the Lincoln's facial features seem to be lost but some parts, such as the word God, are more clearly defined. i started with a scrubbing by toothbrush and tap water, the results are shown in the first photo, after soaking in a citric acid solution till the natural patina was removed you can see some pitting revealed and pinkish color of the stripped down coin. the last picture shows the artificial patina which i attempted to apply. im open to any suggestions on how i could improve any of these steps.

 

[jeff of pa]

sorry to say the first one is most visually appealing to me,
so only suggestion I could give is don't

Good luck & keep us updated though If you really want to keep trying

 

[bufaloeletric]

yea, im gonna have to agree with you. its just that attempting to clean and restore seems to be the other half of the fun.

 

[TreasurePirate69]

I also agree with Jeff.

The original coin was really fine except for some corrosion around the edge lettering of the coin. The cleaning technique you used was able to remove much of it but at the expense of damaging the rest of the coin too. Perhaps there is a better technique (electrolysis?) that could be used on coins such as this when the only problem is corrosion. I don't think you will ever find a one-size-fits-all cleaning technique so I think it makes sense to look at each coin and decide what technique to use based on the needs of the coin itself.

The acid phase clearly did some major damage to the coin. The pitting and loss of detail is excessive making me wonder if you may have gotten better results by not leaving it in the acid so long or by diluting the acid down a bit. Some people talk about using extra virgin olive oil because it breaks up corrosion but is also just slightly acidic. I've never used it personally but it gets mentioned a lot on here.

Your artificial toning is interesting and I'd be curious to hear how you did it. I'm a big fan of natural toning but there are times when it makes sense to do what you can to make a ruined coin look more natural. I have a few old British half pennies that I cleaned to a bright copper finish with Tarn-X. I'd like to experiment and see if I can't put a nice patina back on the coin.

Thanks for sharing this.

 

[bufaloeletric]

its was a 5 percent citric acid-distilled water solution. took about 20 minutes to remove the entire patina, i was surprised by this, maybe i should have toned it down a little(pardon the pun haha) the tone came from pouring ammonia into the bottom of a jar and placing a shotglass inside to elevate the coin above the level of the liquid. then fitting the lid tightly to it. ive read let it sit in a sunny window to warm it up, but i just placed it in front of a heater instead. its a surprisingly quick and easy process if you have the ammonia and a jar. i cant tell you what the long term effect of this patination process is tho, because i just started experimenting with it last nite. so be warned.

 

[TreasurePirate69]

Your acid solution doesn't sound too strong to me. I too am a little surprised by how quickly it appeared to work. But I guess the proof is in the results. Thanks for the info on the toning process. I'll give it a try since my sample coins are ruined anyway.

 

[jeff of pa]

What I'd like to see if someone could come up with a way to Draw out detail
on copper Slugs, Like nic-a-date draws out dates on buffalos

 

[Davers]

Your cents look my 1912, 1916, 1920,1924 that I dug last spring [the 2ed pic ,dull rough brown] .I used est, 30% lemon juice 70% water ,MAN WAS I PISSED . I hated the way they looked & felt so I reburied them ,it was last March so its been a year now . I have not checked them yet Im hopeing to restore some patina ,thik ill wait another year . I wont make that mistake again , Now I either "dry clean,with a brush" ,brush with soap & water. & lately after the soap & water I soak wheats in mineral oil for a couple days to a week then scrub again ,this seems to work pretty well . p.s. I got the mineral oil trick from another poster .In my opinion it works better than olive oil & its cheaper. good luck

 

[bufaloeletric]

hey davers, how long has it been since you soaked them in the mineral oil? no noticeable change since?

 

[Davers]

hey davers, how long has it been since you soaked them in the mineral oil? no noticeable change since?

I soaked a few pennies that I had already cleaned w/soap & water ,they still hed crusty junk on them 2 days of soaking then scrubbing with a 2x4 inch med stifness bristle brush seemed to help a lot , note these were not the pennies I ruined with the lemon juice mixture. Over the years Id forgotten about some ealry bronze wheat cents that I m to had put into olive oil up to two years before and that didny seem to clean them that much. Id just try to dry scrub the hell out of them & see how that works. I do this cleaning for display only with non "key date wheat & Indian cents",as the comon dates arent worth but 5 c to about $1,50 in good 4 cond, sometimes I wonder if its worth the time? .In the future ill prob-just clean 1942 & bronze wheats & then only the ones that will prob, turn out nice . ? maybe tumble the rest .Georgia soil destorys pennies. sorry so long ,got on a rant good luck..