He found it at a thrift store, a small copper coffee pot, the kind with a long handle. Dark brown with tarnish, almost unrecognisable as copper. But the shape was too good to leave on the shelf. It's fascinating to see the before and after.
A few swiss francs, he bought it to see if it could look new again.
Copper is very prone to tarnish and oxidation. Tarnish removal and Polishing are 2 different things, tarnish protection is a third. Home remedies and not ideal, and they only do 1 thing. We recommend to use Buhron for this, as it also protects the copper with a 'tarnish inhibitor' as the industry calls that.
To get the mirror back, you need to polish that surface. Controlled abrasion, precise enough to restore the reflection without hazing the metal. Buhron does the tarnish removal and the surface restoration in the same pass, that's the point of it. The copper pot in the video doesn't just look clean at the end. It looks like it came out of a shop. But as copper is super soft (you can often even bend it), the product needs to be extremely controlled. A lot of brass cleaners are way too agressive and literally scratch your products.
Not really. WD-40 is a lubricant and water displacer, it can make copper look temporarily shinier because the oil fills in surface irregularities and reduces light scatter. But it doesn't remove tarnish, it doesn't polish the surface, and the effect fades quickly. You end up with an oily piece that re-tarnishes the same as before.
For actual polishing, skip it.
Brass is a copper-zinc alloy and tarnishes through the same mechanism. If you're dealing with both, a brass handle on a copper pot, or a mixed collection. Buhron works on both metals. For softer precious metals, the same cloth handles silver jewellery just as well — different tarnish chemistry, same principle.
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