Caring for vintage copper – Vintage French Copper

I’ve learned a lot about copper and tin in the course of using and cleaning my vintage pots and pans and I hope my experiences can help you use and care for yours. (If you’re looking for advice on buying vintage French copper, please check out my Buyer’s Guide.)

Cleaning & maintenance

Vintage French copper pots and pans will last for centuries with some basic care. Here are some highlighted posts,

I tested homemade copper cleaners — salt, lemon, and ketchup.
I don’t like scrubbing my tin-lined pans hard, so when they get carbonized food residue on the inside, I have a technique to soften the residue so it can be scrubbed away more gently.
I tackled polymerized oil — residue on the exterior copper that heated up into a hard plastic-like substance and is pretty impossible to remove with just soap and water.

All “Cleaning & maintenance” posts

Here are all the posts I’ve organized into this category.

A distress call

Maintenance: Rusty iron handles

Maintenance: Metal polish for tarnish

Salt, lemon, ketchup: Testing homemade copper cleaners

Cleaning carbonized gunk

Removing polymerized oils

Stuff I use

These are the products I’ve chosen for my copper. (These are not paid endorsements and any product links in these posts are just normal links like you’d get from a friend.)

I use Bistro copper cleaner to remove tarnish from the exterior of my pans.
When I actually want to polish copper to protect it from tarnish, I use Simichrome.
To protect the cast iron handles from rust, I use Renaissance wax.

Retinning

Owning and using tinned copper means you might have to retin a piece now and then. Here are a few highlighted posts.

I wrote To retin or not to retin? for the process of buying a piece online, but I think it might also be helpful for evaluating tin in general.
Picking a good tinner is about just that — questions you should ask when deciding whether to send your copper to a particular shop. (It’s an excerpt from Bad tin below.)
Bad tin is a cautionary tale of my experience working with a less-than-professional retinner.
A tale of character loved and lost is another cautionary tale about an over-exuberant polishing job.