In my element...

I bought some copper miniatures from Elly's estate.  As they have some hammered surfaces, I assume they were made by Philippe Bordelet.  The way they are made also suggests they are by Philippe Bordelet.  However, the soldering and finish on them is really quite bad.

In the past I have bought copper miniatures from Philippe himself and they are nicely made even though his soldering could have been better.  So, maybe these were early pieces or he just didn't have his day when he made them.

Whatever the case may be,  I decided to clean up the solder joints a bit.

I started with the pitcher which had a lot of solder all along the outside of the spout, the joint in the back and the handle.  First I removed the worst of the solder with a file, then rubbed it with sandpaper, then buffed it with a buffing paste. 

 I didn't want to be too rigorous so there still is a little bit of solder showing, but I really like it now.  

The little pudding mould had a lot of bad scratches on top, as if someone had stepped on it while it was on the pavement!  How on earth that happened I don't know, but I managed to get those scratches out as well.  

Cleaning the copper really started because I have a new toy:  an ultrasonic cleaner.  Very useful for cleaning silver, copper and other small bits and bobs.  These copper pieces were my guinea pigs so to speak.  I only used water and a little washing up liquid but that worked very well. 

Next up for cleaning were these three pieces.  Again, Bordelet pieces and I hate to say it,  but they look terrible.  The lid on the coffee pot (?) is really poorly made.  You can even see the mark from where it hit the edge of the doming block.  If I would cut that off the lid would be too small so I will leave it.  Then there is the crooked knob, the handle, the solder...

The tarte mould had an ugly blob of pitted solder on it which removed.  As with the first two pieces, I filed, sanded and buffed, then put them into the ultrasonic cleaner and gave them a quick wipe when they came out.   So satisfactory to see the change.

Such an improvement!  The lid of the coffee pot could do with a little more work, but I will leave it as it is for now.  

Another thing I bought from Elly's estate was a small samovar.  I didn't think it was copper but some kind of cheap metal.  Such a pity I did not take a picture of how it looked before I cleaned it...

I started cleaning it very carefully as the material wasn't very thick.  It got worse before it got better, but it turned out to be copper and brass after all.  No files and buffing on this one, just very careful polishing.  It took a long time but again, what an improvement!