Painting with Fire- Torching a Patina on Copper

Microtorch

Fire can transform a piece of copper into a rainbow of color.  Loving to work with fire, I have numerous torches.  For my birthday I bought a Blazer butane microtorch to use in soldering.  It is a great little torch because you can add oxygen to the flame to get the right amount of heat.  Also nice that it starts with pushing a button rather than a lighter.  Any torch will work  however.

Variations in color

Some people make a piece of jewelry then heat it with the torch to get the look they want.  I chose to patina an entire sheet because I want to make earrings out of it and I want them to look similar.  Heat patina is tricky because you don't really know the results until you remove the heat.  The metal changes first from gold, to orange, then reddish, green, blues and finally black.  You can see all the different possibilities here in this photo.

I put the piece of metal on a tripod and heated it from underneath moving the torch around so as not to overheat the metal.  When a color I liked magically appeared on the surface I removed the heat.  If you hold the torch without moving it you get something that looks like this.  The back of the metal is black because  it got really hot, but I think this will make a nice earring.  I just let the sheet of copper cool naturally so I could watch the colors emerge and decide it I wanted to hit it again with heat.

Getting the patina to stay can be an issue because the lacquers will muddy the colors and dull the finish.  Here is a forum where people suggest different products but I am just going to let nature take its course and see what happens.  I'll post some jewelry I make out of this sheet and let you know about finishes as I experiment further.  I have read that you can also patina in an oven but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

If you got questions, leave me a comment and I'll do my best.