More on our Pewter Bangles today!

Here i’m giving them a “Patina”. Pewter is very resistant to patina and to give it a blackened look I have to expose it to various chemicals which causes oxidisation. Modern pewter would never get this dark on it’s own. Silver on the other hand can get very dark, infact you can actually tarnish silver just be leaving it in a bag with cooked and mashed eggs!

Pewter Bangle with Patina

The chemicals I used here are not particularly nice in liquid form and I have to wear protective gloves and a mask. Once it is dry it’s relatively safe but will leave marks on the skin so it will need to be coated with a special metal laquer. But before I do that I want to add some depth to the finish of the bangles by polishing off some of the patina.

Pewter bangle with Patina

The image above shows the bangles after being polished a little to show the highlights. The Patina here is quite dark but we can also create a much lighter effect and often display a range of styles at our shows. The free form shapes are pendants that we make be pouring molten pewter onto a steel plate or firebrick and then manipulating it into various shapes. It’s hard to predict exactly what shape we’ll get – but that is half of the fun. We always carry these pendants at shows but don’t list them on our site due to the very individual nature of each piece!

To finish the bangles i’ll now have to seal them as I mentioned earlier. This is a long process and sometimes takes over a week!