Shiney Abell Whistle update.....

Whistle
1

List:
for those that are interested I did speak with Chris Abell about the Brass trim on my Abell Whistle. He told me it is just highly polished and there is no coating of any kind on the trim.
Does anyone know of any chemical I could use to get that tarnished look you would see if you look at my Copeland brass Whistles. The Copeland Whistles tarnished within a month.
Ideally I would like to use a chemical that I wouldn’t need to dress up in an EPA hazardous waste suit to use!
Mr. F

[ This Message was edited by: Mr. Fandango on 2002-12-19 13:08 ]

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The only chemical I know of is sweat, combined with lots o’ practice… that should do it nicely!

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I looked on http://www.google.com under brass tarnish antiquing and came up with a lot of promising links:

http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=brass+tarnish+antiquing

Good](http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/experts/heloise/qas/0,12875,284575_291820,00.html%22%3EGood) Housekeeping’s Heloise says that you can antique unfinished brass by soakign overnight in salt/vinegar solution.

All of these antiquing solutions would require an acidic agent to be close to your wood though. I don’t know that I’d risk it, myself.

4

Yes, time and practice ought to
do it. There are chemical antiqueing
solutions that jewelers use,
but I wouldn’t bring them near
an Abell. Patient fondling of
the whistle should do the job…

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Thanks for the insights… Ive got a Blackwood abell whistle as well with silver trim that I’ve had for some time and it’s still pretty shiney even with alot of playing , it may just be the intense polishing he must do with the metal.
I’m going to look at the internet sites on tarnishing, but will proceed carefully in terms of application, I may even chicken out on doing this.
It could be that I don’t have that much “palm sweat”, maybe I should farm the Abell out to a heavy palm sweater on this list to get the tarnished look!
Dr F.

6

Let time and use do the job!
You want it to look antique, not chemically treated. Any chemical which got onto the wood could seriously damage it, which would be terrible…