Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi guys, this is Donda with Champion's Choice again, bringing you another video on how to
clean buckles with everyday household things. This is our mascot, CC Buckles. She's our
Buckle Bunny, and she hangs out with us from time to time just to have a good time and
give us a good laugh. So if you're wondering if it is a pun intended, it is.
Okay, I ended last time with showing you guys how to use ammonia and the jewelry cleaner.
So now we're going to tackle the same process, I've got my ammonia water, I actually have
a new batch, and then I've got my jewelry cleaner. I don't have to make a new batch
of that. That stuff will last for awhile if you even put it in a container, if you're
something you're going to be... Now this buckle is fairly dirty. It's all tarnished, but it's
got the black paint. I know you guys are probably really nervous about the black paint coming
off, and it will. From time to time, it comes off, and you may even have buckles at the
house that you've got that paint coming off. Any manufacturer that tells you that black
paint will not come off is lying to you.
[00:01:02]
It will wear off eventually. Now, some of them may be taking a little longer than others.
You may have one of those fancy BB buckles that everyone thinks are bombproof. They're
not. Unfortunately, there's nothing you could do in the process, in the streaming process,
that doesn't eventually -- especially if you're wearing it every day. If you're sitting it
in the container, if you're putting it in the trophy case, you're right, then it will
never wear off. But if you're wearing this buckle on a daily basis or you're wearing
it every couple of days, eventually you're going to see some wear and tear on the black
paint.
I can show you how Champion's Choice does it. I don't know how other companies do it.
I know there's quite a few local companies around here, and I'm pretty sure the process
is really similar. Not positive it's the same, and I'm probably going to get some hate mail
from this. So just telling you; this is a process that a lot of people don't want anyone
knowing about, because it's really a simple process. It is, though, not always fun.
[00:02:00]
And it will take some time to get down and get mastered. So if you think you're going
to be able to do it one time and you're going to be perfect at it and it's going to be wonderful
-- you're not. Like I said, this buckle needs some work, so we're going to put it in our
ammonia cleaner first. And I know this is a deep sink and it's hard to see, but I just
got this buckle by itself, soaking in ammonia cleaner. And remember, we've got the same
thing going on with our jewelry cleaner we've got back here. We're going to let this soak
a little bit and do its magic, because ammonia is a wonderful thing. And yes, I do have my
hands in it. It's not a process that is going to be a problem. I do flush this down the
sink. Ammonia's not going to hurt anybody. This is not anything -- we're not making any
chemicals that you have to worry about.
Now, there are chemicals out there that some people use in their production lines, especially
in the plating processes, that you've very much got to worry about. But nothing that
I show you here you're going to have to worry about putting down the sink, okay? So this
is going here, and I can kind of show you some of the process that we're going to go
to while it's soaking.
[00:03:02]
We've still got our jewelry water here. I took a little bit of jewelry cleaner and a
lot of water, just to dilute it. That stuff's really powerful stuff, and as much as I'd
like to tell you that you have to use that real concentrated, you don't. So you've got
your jewelry cleaner, and I'm going to show you something. We've got our t-shirt here
to clean our buckles with, and like I said, this has obviously been a used t-shirt around
here. The t-shirts are nice and calm, nice and soft. They're not going to hurt your buckles
or scratch them.
One other thing you're going to need is Wal-Mart special again. We use paint, just regular
paint. We use an acrylic paint to paint our buckles. And this is Apple Barrel. It's the
black. It's just ***, it says black, 20504 is what this one is. I know we get it in the
larger containers, but I bought a smaller one for you guys just so you could see it
does come small, and then I've got this little paint tray. It's obviously a used paint tray,
but you can get these at Wal-Mart too, in your arts and crafts.
[00:04:04]
This is a brush that came out of like a 5-pack, I believe. I can even grab it for you. This
one was a miniature set. It came out of a 5-pack. Now, in full disclosure, these are
not the brushes that we use. I will use these for solid black buckles, but we do not use
this thick of brush, for one, for the outlining of the letters that we do as a company. I
know we're the ones that started that, and I know people have picked it up since then,
but since we've been around so long, it started a long time ago for us. And we have to use
a really thin, thin brush. Matter of fact, we have to take the smallest brush we can
find and then chop it down even further in order to outline the letters. So that's a
process that does take a little bit more time and is more of an advanced process. If I get
enough response on these, eventually I will put something together to show you guys how
to do that, outline the letters too.
[00:05:04]
But right now, this is a basic thing on how to repair some of your black paint that came
off the buckles, how to get your buckles clean that are sitting at home and going into tarnish
instead of having to send them back to the manufacturer. And a lot of them won't even
talk to you about it. I know there's a lot of manufacturers out there that won't even
discuss cleaning the buckles. They don't have time. And it's a hassle. I mean, I've got
to tell you, it's a hassle. You've got all these buckles going through the production
line, and then a person sends them back and wants one buckle cleaned, and you're like
"Oh gosh. But let's get it done."
So we'll get it done, and then we do it as a company and we clean them up, but we do
have to charge for it. If you're sitting at home and you've got some spare time on your
hands, at least you can grab some of this stuff and see if it doesn't work and give
you a quality of product that you're okay with. It may not be exactly like you'd get
it here -- because it's going to look like a brand new buckle when it ships out of here.
It's going to have brand new stones, brand new everything. But it's still going to be
okay. It may not be perfect, but it'll be okay. And this will give you a nice buckle.
[00:06:00]
So let's look at our buckle over here that is cooking -- or shaking, I guess -- and see
where we're at. Now our trusty little toothbrush here. You're asking why is this foaming up?
It's still probably got some of that toothpaste on it, which is not a problem. That toothpaste
is great stuff, and matter of fact I'm probably going to add some to it just to give us a
little bit more oomph, and now it's going to really bubble on us. If you're wondering
if this is going on the floor, yes, I'm making a mess in the water, and I probably will fall
down on my face in a minute. So this is not a clean process. Do it over the sink. The
only reason you're not seeing it over the sink is because I need to talk to you.
All right, so we're scrubbing this buckle and we're getting this cleaned up, and eventually
things are going to start happening. Now, I can tell, based on my results here, that
some of this stuff is plated.
[00:07:00]
Some of this stuff on this buckle -- and I'm not even sure who made it and don't care.
I grabbed a plethora of buckles that I had in my awards over the years, and buckles are
buckles. As far as cleaning processes goes. Some of them will withstand it, some of them
won't, but it shouldn't make a difference as far as what I'm showing you here on who
manufactured it. So like I said, I'm not worried about it; I'm just educating you on the differences
here.
So we're going to wash this off, and I'll show you what I mean. Now, the last thing
we want to do is dilute our jewelry cleaner water any more, so be sure you don't add extra
water to that. But I do have everything just kind of shoved in the sink here, so we're
not doing a real good job of keeping everything separate.
[00:08:02]
Now, if you'll notice this -- and I don't know how much you can see of this. I know
I'm getting a lot of reflection, but you'll see the different colorations. You'll see
the really bright, bright gold and then you'll see some darker gold. That is because these
were plated letters or they were used as a gold filled letter. And that's wearing off.
It is a wear-it-off process. Your gold filled it what they consider an overlay, and that
stuff will wear off eventually. This is a '95 buckle, looks like, so you know, 2005
it was 10 years old and we're a lot past that at this point. Buckles have wear and tear.
It's part of it.
And gold filled is a more expensive process. Actually, just to give you a little education
though, gold filled is gold on top and jeweler's gold on the bottom most of the time. That's
how they make that. So even though it does wear off, you'll still have your gold color
underneath, because jeweler's gold is gold all the way through. Another name for jeweler's
gold -- red brass.
[00:09:01]
So if you're wondering what jeweler's gold is, it's red brass. If you're wondering, if
people tell you that you're getting a German Silver buckle, you're also getting a Nickel
Silver buckle. It's the same thing. So your jeweler's gold and red brass are the same
thing; your German Silver and your Nickel Silver are the same thing. So if you're questioning
yourself about that when people are quoting you buckles, those are the same animals.
Now, your difference in your plated buckles versus your Sterling Overlay buckles. Your
manufacturers that manufacture and don't plate will have a lower line of German Silver buckles.
They'll have a medium line of Sterling Overlay buckles, and then of course your solid sterling
is silver all the way through. Your Sterling Overlay buckles is done through a laser process
where they put a real thick layer of silver over the top of the German Silver plate. You
flip it over, it's German Silver. On the top, it's silver. Now, there is different gauges.
Nowadays, people are usually using 10% Sterling Overlay because sterling is so expensive,
they cannot afford to use anything more.
[00:10:02]
There is a 20% Sterling Overlay, but honestly, to get it cost effective from most of your
rodeo associations out there, everyone's using 10% because there's just a huge difference
in price. Silver is very expensive now, and the thicker the buckle is, the more expensive
it gets, because everything goes up. So that's why you're seeing a lot of your Silver Overlays
going to 10%. We'll have an education about that a little later on. The 10% is a 10% of
the metal, if you're wondering about the 10% layer. It's 10% sterling and the rest of it
is German Silver.
Now, this obviously has not been in the jewelry cleaner. You want to do your jewelry cleaner
first before you worry about fixing your paint. So we're going to put it in the jewelry cleaner
and let it do its magic. Now, the jewelry cleaner is not a process that you want to
leave for a long period of time. A minute is plenty, and at that point you probably
want to not even do that much. In the meantime, we're going to get our paint ready while it's
sitting in the jewelry cleaner.
[00:11:02]
And like I said, this is Apple Barrel, it's an acrylic paint, it's what we use here at
Champion's Choice. And I didn't take the lid off of this before. So we'll just open it
up and pour. Now, it takes very little paint to do this, so if you're watching me, we'll
have to see how much we get. Now, this is really thick when it comes out. It's thick.
And honestly, it's too thick. If you put it on this thick, it's going to get really clumpy
and it's going to get really nasty. If you see your buckle and it's real shiny, shiny
because after they put the lacquer and everything on, a lot of it is the paint's too thick.
So just a little education there.
And everybody's capable of it. I saw some buckles the other day that were mine that
were five years old and they were too thick, and I was like "Oh my gosh, I can't believe
those got out of here without me knowing about it," but they did. So everyone's capable of
it. And I shouldn't be pouring this paint down the sink, but I just kind of wanted to
give you an idea of the consistency.
[00:12:01]
I got a little too much water in it. I usually don't pour the water straight into the paint;
I put it side by side and bring it in. But for the sake of getting this done... so it's
a pretty thin consistency. You can guarantee that you're going to need to put at least
two, maybe three coats on the buckle. And you don't want to do it wet to wet. You want
to let one coat dry, come back to it in about five, ten minutes, put another coat on. Because
if you don't, you're just swapping paint around. You're just pushing wet paint around. It doesn't
work as good.
So I'm going to set this aside and we're going to grab our buckle out of the jewelry cleaner
and wash it off and towel dry it. Now, if you'll notice, that jewelry cleaner brought
out the color of that jeweler's gold more, so your buckle that you could really used
to see, that really two-toned color, now it doesn't look as bad, because now it actually
looks like the jeweler's gold that it is. You're really going to notice it when it comes
out. If you're wondering the difference in colors, you're really going to notice it when
it comes out of the ammonia stage. When it comes out of the jewelry cleaner, it should
look very similar.
[00:13:03]
That's why a lot of times, honestly, as a buckle maker, I try to talk people out of
doing the gold fill. It's a ton more expensive, and it's prettier at first, but if people
are going to wear the heck out of a buckle, eventually it will wear off. Because it's
a 22 gauge metal, which is a real thin metal. Anyway, all your lettering is done with a
thinner metal than your buckle is, and the tendency for it to wear more so than like
your Sterling Overlay, because it's a thicker metal and it's got more silver on it. The
gold fill will wear off a lot easier than some. And your plated is definitely going
to wear off.
Just so you know, you can see that color -- I don't know if you can see it because of the
glare, but the color variations that were here are almost unpronounced now because we
put it in the jewelry cleaner and it took the tarnish out. So now we're going to go
over our paint here. Now, this paint actually really doesn't need much of a touch-up. If
you'll look at it, it was painted around the engraving already.
[00:14:01]
So it's just, if anything -- I'll just kind of get closer with the buckle -- if anything,
it just needs one coat. It didn't come off. Now, if the paint comes completely off and
you're starting with fresh metal, you're going to need at least two coats. But this paint
didn't come off, so we're just going to take our paintbrush and go over the paint that
was already there. I am not going to bore you guys to death with doing this full buckle
in front of you. I'm telling you right now that when this paint dries, it'll be nice
and bright and shiny and you'll see the black. It'll be a lot easier. Now, you are going
to get black on your letters.
Keep in mind, acrylic paints are water-based paints, so use a wet towel -- and I'm talking
towel as in your wet t-shirt -- to wipe the letters off after everything dries. Just lightly
go over the letters with a wet t-shirt and the black paint will come off your letters.
Now, the next process that you would go through if you were working or if you were in an actual
buckle company is you would dip this in a lacquer and let it dry.
[00:15:04]
After you got all the paint done, after you took the paint off your letters with your
towel -- and sometimes I even do it as we're painting. As we're painting along here and
I see it go over a letter, a lot of times I'll just wipe it with my finger and get most
of it off. But you are going to have to go over it with a towel of some sort. Just kind
of wipe it off the letters. And when it dries, like I said, you usually dip it in a lacquer.
I will cover that in another video, on what you can do as far as the lacquer goes. Right
now, I'm just trying to get the basics down for you so you can kind of see what it's going
to look like and what to anticipate if you clean your own buckle.
You don't think this makes a huge difference; it does. Now, just so you know, I'm going
in between all the letters, I'm going inside the letters. I'm just following along the
original paint lines. I'm not trying to change the buckle up any; I'm just going along the
regular paint lines.
[00:16:04]
Now, you're asking yourself about different colors at this point, I bet, especially if
you're one of these kids that likes real flashy stuff. I have tried different colors in this
paint, and it's not as easy. For some reason, the black works really well, and some of the
blues. But when you start going lime greens and stuff like that, some of this paint does
not look near as good as the black does. The black does a really nice process.
So if you're thinking, if you're this kid that thinks they need to go change their buckle
color because Donda showed them how, then you might want to rethink that, or maybe try
another piece of metal around the house that's already -- but you got to keep in mind too,
these buckles are what we call buzzed in the background. That's the only reason this paint
sticks. It has this metallic buzzing in the background. That's a different process. That's
a production process, and one I'm not going to go through today. So this is not something
you can just grab any piece of metal and decide to paint; it doesn't work that way.
[00:17:03]
It's got to be painted originally so it's got that roughing and that buzzing in the
background, okay? What I'm going to do is I'm going to take the end of this t-shirt
that we've already got nasty, and obviously I've used this already for painting and cleaning
up paint, and I'm just going to wipe this down. I've already pre-wet this so it does
have some wet to it. I probably normally would let it dry a little longer, but since we are
on a time schedule, I'm going to go ahead and grab this.
Now, there's one other stage that you've got to do before this is ready to go. When you
get this done, if this has been wet, you're probably going to see kind of a film over
your letters. And that's just part of it. It's from the water, and it's going to happen.
So what happens -- I'm not going to do it now, because if I do it, it's going to smear;
the paint's still wet. But what you need to do is just go to the clear piece and just
wipe your whole buckle down and it'll take care of that film over your letters from the
water.
[00:18:00]
So this is our shiny buckle. You remember what we saw before. So this is the process.
I'm cleaning your buckle and adding that paint and adding a little extra paint to it. Now,
if you've already got a solid black buckle that's just got some pieces missing, you don't
want to go through this whole process. You can just touch up the black paint with this
process also. But if you don't go through the lacquer process that I'll show you a little
later, then there's going to be a huge color difference. Because nine times out of ten,
if it's a solid black buckle, it's been coated in lacquer, just to keep that black from wearing
as fast. So you can touch it up.
We've even used a little Sharpie to touch up like a spot on a buckle before. I wouldn't
do more than a spot, because the Sharpie is a different color black than your black buckle.
So if you're just touching up a spot that's bugging the heck out of you and you have a
Sharpie at the house, you can try it and see if it works. If it doesn't, it will come off
with acetone. But so will the rest of the black paint, so you have to -- you've got
to be careful what you do.
[00:19:00]
And I am not guaranteeing this is going to work on everybody's buckle, guys. Do not send
me a bunch of hate mail and a bunch of raising hell because you guys used this on a buckle
and it completely took all the paint off of it. It will take the paint. The ammonia process,
even the toothbrush, will take some paint off. So if you're not prepared to go through
this whole process as far as painting and everything, don't even start it. So you've
got to be prepared that some of this process may take your paint off; you've got to be
prepared that some of this stuff may happen, and if you're prepared for all of it, then
you'll be fine.
Don't start cleaning your buckle for a date on Friday night on Thursday and not have the
paint to fix it and then get pissed off because you can't wear your buckle on a date. So make
sure you've got everything you need at your house: your paint, your brushes, your ammonia,
and everything before you start this process, unless you've got a lot of time on your hands
and you're just playing around.
So hope this helped you out a little bit. I will come back at a later date probably
and add to this series, as far as maybe the roughing and stuff like that. Oh, and I do
need to show you the lacquer, so I may come back one more time with the lacquer.
[00:20:02]
But other than that, I hope this series was good for you, and me and CC the Buckle Bunny
are going to check on out. Thanks.