For those of you that have not seen it happen, the dezincification of brass
is very common and can be a real pain the posterior. Brass is basically a
mixture of copper and zinc. We are all familiar with the color of copper, and
zinc is grey/white. As you mix the two colors together you get the yellow
typical of brasses. One way to tell if a brass bucket in the antique store is
really old is to look for pink spots. Zinc is much more reactive (dissolves)
than copper, so an old bucket is likely to have places where some of the zinc
has been dissolved out. That leaves a pink or copper colored spot there. That
copper spot may have little tunnels thru the copper matrix that will cause a
vessel to leak or weep.
CAUTION - some of the less honest people in the antique business will
import cheap new brass buckets from somewhere and use acids, etc to dissolve
out some of the zinc to make the bucket look ancient and thus worth much more
money in the shyster antique shops.
Keep your steam up!
Walt
