

Simply put, oxidisation is when an atom, ion or molecule experiences the loss of electrons in a chemical reaction. The patina is a thin layer that forms on the coppers surface, so it’s this patina that gives the Statue of Liberty her beautiful green appearance. Then why is the Statue of Liberty green I hear you ask? Copper turns green because of a process called oxidisation, which forms a distinctive green coating named patina. The colour will develop gradually while it dries.Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is made from copper? Copper is that beautiful rich orange red metal that is used within plumbing, and what coins used to be made from.
Green patina copper how to#
Figure 1, brown patina, as naturally develops with all handled copper objects.įigure 2, brittle blue patina, as I've seen in isolated spots on pennies and analogous to what a lot of youtube videos show how to create - this is specifically what I don't want.įigure 3, the glorious coating-like verdigris patina I'd like to get.įigure 4, this shows the same coating-like verdigris, but on bronze rather than copper. 4, it seems it can be obtained on either, but I'm not asking about bronze in this question. Someone brought up in the comments, that the passivating light turquoise patina is specific to bronze and not copper.

I also consulted youtube for verdigris how-to's, and they all end up producing very brittle looking crystals, which are only preserved by adding some sealant to the metal after treatment - for what it's worth the color also doesn't really match what I see from statues/buildings (the architectural patina is more green, less blue, and less vibrant). 3), which is indeed somewhat rough, but is never brittle, and looks more like proper passivation than corrosion.


This stands in stark contrast with the patina I see on statues and on copper roofs (Fig. more like iron oxide than aluminium oxide), and are rough and brittle (Fig. 1), and sometimes will develop some blue-green spots on them, which however bloom out of the penny, appear corrosive rather passivating (i.e. old copper pennies), is that “normally” copper objects will patina black-brown (Fig. What I can conclude from natural experiments (e.g. I find this highly doubtful, since copper sulfate forms bright blue crystals. According to an unsourced claim from wikipedia, exposure to chlorides leads to blue-green coloring, while exposure to “sulfur compounds” leads to black-brown coloring. Looking up the topic here and on wikipedia it seems that copper can patina either in brown or in blue. I own a number of copper writing utensils, which I'd like to get a nice patina on, preferably verdigris. First off, I checked and there are indeed a number of questions on copper patinas, but none which deal with resilience.
