Cleaning Copper with Lemon and Salt

Recently at Blue Bird Circle Resale, I found the cutest copper coffee press. I’m guessing it works like an Italian style percolator. Coffee is loaded into the top metal sieve, hot water is poured through, and fresh coffee slowly drips into the cup below.

Of course, I don’t know because I haven’t tried it out yet. Instead, I’ve been enjoying this piece as decoration on a shelf.

When I bought it, the tarnish was a dull brown. Didn’t quite like that, so a quick scouring of the net yielded a cleaning method with ingredients I had on hand.

The method is pretty simple and safe: dip lemon wedges into salt and rub the wedges onto the copper piece. Rinse with water and dry.



Like magic (or some kind of chemistry trick), it took the tarnish right off.
At first, I was disconcerted with the weird pinkish cleaned copper. After giving it half an hour or so, the piece began to oxidize again and developed a warm patina. Much nicer.



A few pointers about this technique:

Keep soft, dry cloths around to wipe away the excess water from rinsing. Otherwise, you’ll be left with dark, streaky drip stains on the copper. Unless that’s the sort of rustic look you’re hoping to achieve.

Since lemons are pricey, it’s best to leave this technique for smaller pieces. The surface area of a lemon isn’t that big. So you have to go through a whole lot of lemons to clean something big, like a copper kettle.
But for the small stuff, this works in a pinch!