Peanut oil patina

I'm editing photos for the Challenge of Music reveal, but thought I'd just show a couple of other pics while I'm at it.

Some time ago I heard about peanut oil patina and researched it a bit. Liked what I saw in the photos I found and in the end I decided to try it out. Now, finding peanut oil turned out to be a little tricky and none of the text found talked about any other oil. In the end I did find the right oil, but then after buying it other things got in the way so the bottle just sat there by the worktable for weeks and months. This weekend I tought it'd be a good subject for my other blog so I had to give it a try.

First piece, the copper blank on the right in the photo above got a bit too dark. Did know all instructions said to heat the metal slowly and stop when the right colour was reached, but I just had to add a little more heat. And a little more. And in the end it turned out very dark. But still nice and shiny so it isn't ruined.

For the second piece, a bronze tag, I didn't torch the oil as much and it turned out a nice dark golden colour. The unflattering light spots are water drops. There were some water on the pin I used to suspend the tag while torching and it spattered when heated by the torch, I guess.

I then had to ask myself if it was possible to use other, more common, oils and took some rapeseed oil from the fridge and also found some castor oil leftovers from the time me and my sis dabbled in making DIY make-up and cosmetics.

Now, at this point I should've read this list because while the rapeseed worked pretty much as well as the peanut oil, I set fire to the castor oil. The others just smoked. This one was suddenly engulfed in flames. Ooops... If nothing else, I should've known enough about cooking to consider the smoking point! But in the end, that bronze tag too got a nice patina.

The rapeseed oil tag looks better IRL, really. Also keep in mind that not only are these the result of my first try at the technique, I was too lazy to clean any of the tags befor torching them so with better preparation and careful torching the result would probably be even nicer.

Top row: plain bronze, peanut oil

Bottom row: rapeseed oil, castor oil