I glued some braces inside the cabinet, sanded the door's exterior window trims, and put a coat of varnish on the door's interior. Then I did something other than glue, sand, or paint! I aged the hinges and door knobs, using a solution called Blacken-It. It is available where model railroad supplies are sold. I think we got ours from Micromark.
These are the door hinges I will be using. Now, we can't have shiny new hardware on a shack, can we?
(Sorry for the not-so-good picture. I have a hard time photographing small shiny things. Pringles can lids are shiny. ;-P )
There appears to be some kind of coating on the brass hinges, since the blacken-It solution seems to have no effect on the finish if it is simply applied. So, I scuffed the surface with an emery board, then grew impatient and used a metal file before applying the Blacken-It. I applied the solution with a Q-tip. The Blacken-It is a poison, so it is a good idea to not to get it on the skin.
Here are the 3 aged hinges, and a new one on right. I wouldn't call the color 'black', but it does look like aged brass. I think that 'gray' metals would turn black.
Here is an aged door knob and a new one. After taking this photograph, I aged the other knob too.
After spending most of the week spring-cleaning our home, and making stuff shine, it was fun to make things un-shiny!
Today's favorite tool: Q-tips
4 comments:
Very cool! I will have to give that a try some time.
Wow - this is great! I'll have to keep this in mind!!! Thanks for the great idea :) - ara
Railroad modelists sure like to end their product lines with "it"...first you introduced us to Weather-It, now it's Blacken-It! Such good timing on your part, I'm installing doorknobs and pulls today but this time I'll probably age 'em up with paint because I'm too impatient to wait for deliveries from Micro-Mark.
I used Blacken-It on some doorknobs today and the results are great!
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