How to finish Zinc

[Pfälzer]

Hello friends of fine wood,
Unfortunately, some kits include zinc castings.
Now I have read somewhere on the net that this can also be burnished. With red wine.

I myself replace such parts with my own wooden ones, but I have played around a bit for you. Simply place the corresponding component in said red wine. After about 20 hours, the wine will lose its effect. If the part is still not dark enough, add another bottle.
As at the wine festival, if it's not dark enough, have another spritzer.
You can also tell by the fact that the wine then starts to foam.
After the second bath, the windlass I was trying out wasn't as dark as it is now. But it will darken in the air in a few days.
A little wax polish on it and it looks quite respectable

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[Pfälzer]

Here the Picture for it

[wefalck]

I gather such parts are not (die-cast) zinc, but rather white-metal ... However, they shouldn't be black anyway, but painted in whatever the colour the ship would have been painted in, often white or green for instance.

 

Railway or figure modellers have a lot of experience with white-metal parts and there is a lot of information on the Web, how to work with such parts.

Edited May 19 by wefalck

[paul ron]

i think this is pickeling the metal since wine is acidic? using vinigar probably will have the same effect and that allows you to drink the wine and when that wears off in 20 hours everything will have darkened.

[Pfälzer]

So I tested the thing with the vinegar that was mentioned the other day.
With alarming results.
After a day in good Melfor vinegar, I took the zinc part out of the jar and it looked beautiful and rough black matt.
Unfortunately, my joy only lasted about two minutes, then the component literally disintegrated before my eyes.

Picture will follow soon

[Pfälzer]

[wefalck]

If the part is really Zinc (and not white metal as usually) than this would have been a bad advice - Zinc is not very stable in acidic environments ...