Gentlemen:
A little off topic maybe, but thought someone might be able to help
out a friend who asked this question.
I need some help/advice/tips. What can any of you tell me?
I recently bought on eBay a very nice old railroad lantern with an
embossed red globe. The globe is just fine. But I have some issues
with the metal frame.
It has structural integrity, no rust, no holes, no minute
perforations. It has the original font and burner with wick. The
pictures on eBay showed that it had a nice patina. When I received
it, its overall appearance was that of a nice patina. However, there
was soot everywhere. You couldn't touch the frame anywhere without
getting a dirty smudge on your hands.
Successive rubbings of the base with a fairly rough paper towel would
not remove it all. After 5-6 rubbings you could still run your finger
along what you had just rubbed and there would be more dirty smudge
on your finger.
It seemed to me the only thing to do was to have someone skilled in
machine service to give this thing a professional cleaning. I asked a
friend who does that to clean it but still try to retain the patina.
But when he gave it back to me after cleaning he informed me that the
soot was so ingrained in the patina that the only way to remove all
of the soot was to take it down to the base metal. I'm not really
doubting his word. But, I am not happy about having lost that
beautiful patina.
My problem now is how to get a nice patina back on this metal lantern
frame. It might help to know what the metal frames on these lanterns
(it's an Adlake) looked like when they were brand-new. Did the
manufacturers coat the base metal with some sort of lacquer before
selling them as new, etc.?
Really need some help here, guys.
Rory Murchison
For
John Swearingen
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