On Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 5:44:13 PM UTC-5, DerbyDad03 wrote:
I'm going to be building something - not plumbing - with 3/4" copper pipe.. As you can see from
this image, the pipe is a different "color" than the fittings. The fittings are bright copper, the
pipe itself is much duller.

Anybody know why that is or more importantly, how to shine up the pipe so that it matches
the fittings?

http://tinyurl.com/CopperPipeColor

Full link:
http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/q...psxbg1l4fw.jpg

I think the fittings are put into a tumbler with some sort of shot or stones to clean and polish them a lot like you'd polish gems. My guess is that it's done to make the fittings easier to solder by cleaning all the oxidation off of them. The cleaner the fittings are to start with, the quicker you can prep the inside surface with a wire brush. When I was running a lot of copper pipe, I used sand cloth to clean the ends before soldering. When I built some control systems where I used 1/4" copper tubing to run to the gauges and valves, I used a brass polish that put a protective coating on the copper pipe which resisted further oxidation. The soft copper pipe I've polished was more red in color than the fittings. My guess is that the soft copper pipe is a different alloy than the fittings but the hard copper pipe is closer to the color of the fittings when polished. If you want to make your project pretty, you can use some fine sandpaper to start with to get the printing and oxidation off the pipe followed by some brass polish. If you have a bench grinder, put a buffer wheel on it and go nuts on the pipe. If you're making something pretty, you can get a tube of paste solder which is flux with solder powder mixed in. Put a little on the inside surface of the fitting and smear a bit on the end of the pipe. You can gently heat the joint to solder it without discoloring the copper and getting solder all over your fitting. ^_^

Oh yea, WTF are you building? o_O

[8~{} Uncle Pipe Monster.