Did I Sand Away Too Much? Or To Little?

[Big_OC]

I started working on some restorations last night and I had an unexpected result. I have a Rubberset 153 handle that is able to unscrew into two pieces. I was working on the bottom piece which was a butterscotch color and started sanding with 320 grit sandpaper and them went 400, 600, 800 and finished at a 1000 grit. Between each grit I would wipe off the handle with a tack cloth. As I was sanding I noticed the handle changed from a butterscotch color to and somewhat looking pearl color with a slight yellowish tinge. I thought that polishing it up with some PlastX at the end would bring back the butterscotch color but that wasn't the case. Here's pic:



The threaded part at the top is what the original color was throughout the handle. The color is the same both inside and outside the handle. Any info would be appreciated. Let me know what you think.

 

[Mike H]

The butterscotch color is a result of oxidation, (a patina if you will on vintage brushes), and generally highly desirable. The Pearl color you see is the original handle color.

 

[blzrfn]

I have been playing around with some butterscotch brushes myself (will post up some pics later) and the coloring on the butterscotch handles is extremely volatile. Polishing with Flitz seemed to bring a nice shine back with minimal removal of the coloring, but use a light hand. Just soaking two of the brushes in hot soapy water left the water with a butterscotch tint and the handles themselves were a few shades lighter so take it really easy if you are trying to preserve the yummy butterscotch. If the brush you are working on was mine I would be tempted to take it all the way back to the original color and take it as close to like new as possible.

 

[Big_OC]

Yeah. The butterscotch looked nice but now this pearl color has me intrigued. I think I'm going to sand it a bit more to get the yellow tinge out and bring back the pearl color.