AFTER
Prospect
I bought these used Nordlux cobber lamps for only 12 dollars each. New price, still available online, is 120 dollars each. They were full of paint-staints and had to put some work into, to get them as new.
STEP BY STEP
Follow each step during the process from start to finish
1.
Take apart and prepare
All the cobber must be 100% covered in water. I had to, after half a day, move around on the pieces as the bottom concentration of citric acid was stronger. All I did was filling a half a bucket full of water, after I added approximately 2dl of citric acid powder.
2.
Polish
I used a very fine furniture steel whool to polish after it has soaked for a day. Some places I had to go really hard, and even use a knife to get the dried up paint spillage off.
3.
Times two
In this case, the lamps were so dirty, not only by normal usage, but they had stains of heavy duty paint on them too. So I had to do it all twice.
Fuck-ups and Lessons Learned
1.
Always make sure you dry and polish the metal as soon as you take it up from the basket when still wet. The second it dries, all the dirt and miscolouring will stick to the surface again, impossible to rinse off. So, only prepare one bit at the time!
2.
I thought the citric acid would dissolve every bit of paint. But the larger stains of paint wouldn’t come off. So I had to use a knife to scrap off the paint. Underneath the cobber was as warn and brown as the other parts were before the citric acid bath. So I had to give the lamps a 3rd bath, which was waste of time. I should have cleaned them all properly the first time before the first bath
