This vintage copper sailboat wall art arrived in many broken pieces. It was an important and sentimental heirloom handed down from father to daughter.

Materials

  • Copper

Processes

  • Copper oxide removal
  • Silver-soldering
the damage

Here’s the condition of this item before restoration. There was a missing sail, a severed boat hull, and many severed bars that represented waves. Because it had been in a wet storage area, copper oxide green corrosion developed on the metal. You can see the green copper oxide on the centre sail in this photo and the next. 

The old repairs - soft soldering and brazing - had not held.

Cleaning and Silver-soldering

I removed the copper oxide and soldered the pieces, and silver soldered the broken parts together.

Since COVID, the disruption to the global supply system in all markets has impacted all of us. The impact on the supply chain is true not only for business owners. No matter what kind of consumer you are, the supply chain causes delays and more significant expenses for all of us.

improvising and making a new sail

I didn’t have enough brass material for one sail, so I silver-soldered two pieces together to make one sail. Copper and brass are costly and can be hard to get, especially in small quantities, so it was lucky that I could improvise.

The sail on the right is the one that later needed distressing to look like the others.

distressing the metal and Final Results

I always send pictures of my progress to my clients, and in this case, my client asked me to distress the new sail to make it look aged like the other sails.

You can see that the sail to the right then matched the other sails.

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