Actually, scientificly,...the patina action stops further oxygen from comming into contact with the Bronze by building up a coat too thick for Oxygen to penatrate. This is not so for Iron Oxide, Oxegen will continue to ventilate through Rust !!

If you look at the Patina on the big old brick Catholic churches roofing,..you see the green with black spotting,...the green is the second stage of Patina action and the black is the final stage,..both stages stop oxegen from getting through but the lead is drawn out of the Copper by Barimetric pressure changes, very slowly leave`n the black color !!

With cymbal grade Bronze, there is Phosphorus added for strenghth instead of lead to make it harder,..Lead makes copper or Bronze more malable and castable so you may never see black patina on a cymbal !!

I like the first phase brownning look myself and if you clean a good Ziljian to a shine, in just a few months it will be that brownning stage for quite some time !! Fingerprints are acidic and invite oxegen into the metal !!

Verdigris... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdigris

Green, patina'd or whatever cymbals are ugly to me and to be brutally honest, give a lazy look to a kit. Lazy meaning someone didn't want to put the work in to make em shiny again. I would bet a million dollars that if people had to work to get a patina on cymbals and they naturally stayed shiny, the in thing would be to have shiny cymbals!!!

Strip down the shells, detail the lugs, the screws, all the hardware, wax up the shells, get the fingerprints off of the hoops from tensioning or whatever then leave the cymbals look like they haven't been touched.......I still find the whole practice of trying to make fifty year old kit look new and leaving fifty year old cymbals to look like they are ninety years old absurd.. Any cymbal I come in ownership of whether it is new, used, old, vintage, or whatever will be shiny!!

toodles

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While you`re there,...search ...Copper Phosphate !!

That`s all fine and dandy but,....The first thing a buyer might think is,..Fake,..Copy..ect.ect.

You need to coat the metal to keep the shine !!

A cymbal or a statue or plate would have to contain the mineral Phosphorus to maintain it`s rigitity !! The alloy (metals) is just too soft !!

Coating a cymbal is like tape on a drum head !!

You are right about the potential thinking of a buyer. Personally, I view every single purchase I make as the seller is trying to rip me off. Walking into a deal with this mindset helps to avoid getting suckered...... The whole patina cymbal thing to me is just nuts anyways. Every once in awhile there is a picture of an old K or something that is NOS, no patina or nothing. Somehow the laws of physics cease to exist and these come about. Like I said, to me, cymbals were made shiny to begin with so the proper thing for someone who restores drums should be to also restore the cymbals to their original glory. Yes, they will keep getting that patina, so that means they have to be cleaned more often. If a non abrasive cleaner is used, the removal of the cymbal material is a non issue. Lazy isn't the appropriate term for many of the drum restorers out there, so I don't want to use that term so loosely again, BUT somewhere, somehow, somebody convinced the cymbal collectors (and players) of the world that patina is good looking and therefore, reduced the workload of maintaining his cymbals from regular elbow grease to no effort whatsoever.......

I can't wait until oxidized paint is cool on cars but until that day, I will just keep on waxing my truck regularly......

toodles

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