Coffee heat rising

Use It Up, Make It Do, Wear It Out: The Joy of Fixing Stuff

UseItUpWearItOutMakeItDoSome years ago, I bought a pretty little copper watering pot. It came from Smith and Hawken, though I may have found it at Target, which used to carry quite a lot of Smith and Hawken products, especially before the outdoor department was shut down. I don’t even think Smith and Hawken makes this design anymore — it doesn’t come up in a cursory search.

Well, it was very cute, but none too practical — its long, graceful spout dispenses water too slowly for my taste. I’m the douse-and-run type of indoor gardener, I’m afraid. So it got set down between a couple of potted plants and pretty much forgotten, unless a visitor remarked on how interesting it was. Last time I used it, it got splashed with water and put away wet, giving it a smallpox-like spattering of dark, round stains. Over the years, it acquired a dark brown layer of tarnish, which did nothing to cover the pox.

It looked terrible. I pushed it back behind the pots (too lazy to find a real place to put it away) and forgot about it.

Well, you know, indoor plants suffer as much from the drought as the landscape and the forests do. The dry air sucks moisture out of potting soil, and in the summer when the AC is set at 80 to 83 degrees, it’s really too hot for tropical plants best suited to live on the rainy side of Hawai’i. They cling to life, but barely.

The other day I decided to clean up the dead foliage and then thoroughly water and fertilize the poor little things. And what should I find in behind the sanseveria and prayer plants but that old copper pot, much the worse for neglect.

Would a quick scrub with Barkeeper’s Helper clean off those dark, ugly water spots?

Nothing ventured…

…And nothing gained: the answer was nope! It did revive the copper glow a little, though. Not much, but some.

The rubber gauntlet was now down: here was a challenge I had to rise to.

Out came all the metal-cleaning products and all the old-wives’ wisdom to which I am privy — which by now, my children, is quite a bit. So…

How to Clean and Polish Copper

Just about any good metal cleaner will help to scour tarnish off copper. The ones actually marketed as copper cleaner are by far the best — brass cleaner and silver cleaner will work, but not as effectively. Dedicated copper cleaner, interestingly, is not all that easy to find these days. If you want it, you may have to order it online.

CopperCreamPersonally, I prefer the creamy type, possibly just because that’s what I’ve always used. But I didn’t have any around, so used some silver cream, also by Wright, which seems to have a good toehold on the grocery-store shelves.

Silver cream didn’t work much better than the Barkeeper’s Helper. So it was time for recourse to the home products.

Just about any combination of salt plus sour stuff will eat the tarnish right off uncoated copper. Your choices look this:

vinegar and table salt
cut lemon and table salt
ketchup (contains vinegar and salt, along with all the sugar, the tomato, and the artificial ingredients)
lemon juice and cream of tartar

Neither ketchup nor lemon & cream of tartar work much better than Barkeeper’s Helper, which is good enough for government work. If you don’t want a really shiny effect, one of these three choices may do the job for you.

Rubbing a half a lemon over the metal and then sprinkling liberally with salt does the job a little better, IMHO. It’s a fair amount of work — you have to reapply the lemon juice and salt several times, and scrub well with a dampened sponge.

The easiest and hands-down most effective home copper cleaner is a combination of white vinegar and table salt. You can mix these together (at least 3 Tbsp salt to two cups of vinegar) or simply pour vinegar all over the object, then salt it generously, and then scrub with a sponge or rag.

Whether you use lemon juice or vinegar, WEAR RUBBER GLOVES FOR THIS CHORE! Vinegar and salt combine to form hydrogen chloride, a strong acid — I once actually etched a concrete floor with the stuff.

As soon as your copper piece is clean, wash it well in soap and water or with baking soda (neutralizes acid), and wash down your sink, lest any leftover acid etch the porcelain. Then dry the piece well with a clean, dry towel.

Copper tarnishes fairly quickly in the presence of oxygen and carbon dioxide — that would be the stuff we call “air.” Some people like that effect, regarding it as a pleasing patina. Others like their copper shiny.

You can delay the corrosion and also give your copper piece a deeper glow by rubbing a very light layer of vegetable oil over it. Go easy on this — you don’t want it to be greasy, just polished. I used olive oil, which also makes the brightwork in the kitchen and bathroom look pretty nice.

Don’t you love to bring new life to old things like this? I think it’s much more satisfying to fix stuff than to go out and buy new stuff.

Here’s how the little pot turned out…

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