A bit of tarnish...

[peregrinvs]

Complete with original patina...

Wish me luck, I'm going in...:wink:



Underneath all that grot is a MkI 13 Pounder case made at the Cossipore Arsenal in 1910. It wasn't that expensive and I thought that cleaning it up and un-denting the neck would make for some interesting restoration skills development. It's now started a soak in dilute citric acid and we'll see what happens. All tips for cleaning heavily corroded brass gratefully received.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[peregrinvs]

...and the job's a good'un.:tinysmile_grin_t:



It had a few soaks in dilute citric acid - periodically scrubbed with fine wire wool. Then today I annealed the neck, unbent and rounded it using an adjustable spanner, the shell as a mandrel and a rubber hammer. Then a final scrub and polish. It's got a slightly silver tinge to it which I put down to the acid taking some of the copper off the surface, leaving zinc. Hopefully it'll look better as it tarnishes. It obviously has various condition issues, but it's been returned to display functionality and I shall count that as a success.

 

[hangarman]

Very respectable restoration. I wonder why the base of the cart has cracked?

 

[peregrinvs]

Very respectable restoration. I wonder why the base of the cart has cracked?

Thank you. Good question. What also puzzles me is why the top seemed to be bent inwards around the rim - like it was meant to crudely hold something in? I'm also puzzled by the corrosion (?) damage to the base as non-ferrous metal doesn't usually corrode in that way. Did they have metallurgical quality control issues at Cossipore?

 

[kahu1]

Could that sort of corrosion be due to something like the recently unearthed info by Ogreve about the Japanese cases having an iron content in the brass to assist with forming the case?