In my current project, an Ozark mountains still, I have made every attempt to present it as it would appear after being n the woods for many moons producing shine. I've Googled different images of weathered copper and I believe I am pretty close to the real thing. "Course, with failing eyesight, I could be miles off base! In new condition, this would be very shiny (new copper plate). I've attempted to leave a bit of a gloss to it. A lot of hours have went into researching this. I hope I am on the right track. The image is produced in Daz Studio 3 with no additional lighting, which is my jumping off point when producing models I will eventually bring to the marketplace. So many of you are so much better at this than I am so I thought it prudent to ask the community. BTW, this is called a flake stand. What say ye?

TIA

C~

dunno what a still looks like, but this is one variation of weathered copper from snarly's free ezmetals. size and colour of mottling can be varied.

if they be hiding it from revenuers, they should camouflage it, so it ain't real shiny IMVHO.

are you going for a realistic design and material?

fact is most stills werent made from copper and in the arkansas region they used submarine pots

copper was expensive back then so they would use whatever they had availible and just leave the boil tank behind and make a new one each year

they did use copper for the cap and the piping to the thump tank and the worm but the thumper and worm were just wooden barrels that the bought from distilleries

it wouldnt be too hard to make a reasonable model of a still quickly

i have thought about modeling my old copper porkpot still in the past just didnt know that anyone would want it 

 

The original image is too orange. The colour to me is closer to an active rust on steel. Copper is much browner in colour. Also, 'weathering' might be the wrong term. Snarly's copper is not 'weathered' it's 'antiqued', a specific chemical process applied to copper sheet to make it look aged, then it's sealed in a varnish so you never have to polish it.Old copper boilers here in Aus are usually a darkish red brown colour, almost like chocolate, with hints of sky blue around the rim.

My suggestion is to do an image search for 'patination on copper'. Copper reacts to its environment; it can turn brown, it can turn blue or green (copper sulphates forming on the surface), it can turn blood red... check the potential range of surfaces and colours the image search pulls up if you use the word 'patina'.

In fairness, Snarly's surface is one mild option that you will find; I said it was a commercial chemical process on copper, and that's just an emulation of natural patina (although using one specific chemical set with repeatable results).