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Jun 15th, '12, 23:23
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Re: NEW!HAGI SO 17 Oribe "SOU-SHUN" Comes the Spring Phase 1

by debunix » Jun 15th, '12, 23:23

My lovely evergreen 'sou-shun' is getting a very nice staining in concentrated periods of use as the sole resident cup at the satellite office. The weight and solidity of the cup are working marvelously for all different types of tea.

But.....something about the interior is really holding the tannin stains firmly, and after 8 hours of continuous tea holding, it looks very brown, and the surface is very hard to rub clean with a cloth or paper towel due to very fine irregularities.

Any suggestions for how to keep this tricky interior surface sparkling white (except for the pretty crackles)? I'm contemplating bringing some denture tabs to keep in the back of the locker here.....

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Jun 17th, '12, 21:37
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Re: NEW!HAGI SO 17 Oribe "SOU-SHUN" Comes the Spring Phase 1

by Chip » Jun 17th, '12, 21:37

Frequent sencha use has not had this effect ... but I did have this with Hagi SO 10 Ice Split. After pondering this for a while, I finally decided I wanted to "clean it." To that point all I ever did was the same thing I do with all Hagi, hot rinse and pat dry with a soft cotton dish towel.

After looking around, I finally found some unscented denture cleaner in powder versus tablet form. After pondering whether I still wanted to do it, I did it.

The effect was to "reset" it almost back to new. It looked beautiful, stain free ... but the stained crackles were virtually gone as well. I was amazed at this developement. TBH, Ice Split stained crackles kind of bothered me a bit anyway since they seemed to compete with the ice-splitting.

Since this, I have used it pretty much, the crackling quickly restained, but oddly the staining did not.

In this piece, I would not hesitate much to do it again, but in some other more beautiful crackling pieces, I might not be so quick.

Anyway ... you won't know til you try, but I expect some similar reactions with this interior as the stained crackles are actually similar.

Oh, I also did this treatment with a Seigan blue, similar reaction.

Let us know how you make out.

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Jun 17th, '12, 22:59
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Re: NEW!HAGI SO 17 Oribe "SOU-SHUN" Comes the Spring Phase 1

by debunix » Jun 17th, '12, 22:59

What I find with this cup is that rubbing is just not effective, because the surface is subtly irregular, and I need something more like a scrub brush to get into the nooks and crannies....or to try the denture tablets. I have some generic tabs that have been just lovely for things like keeping the unscrubbable inside of the spout of glass teapots with integral filters sparkling clean. I've dropped a few of them into the supplies I'll take with me for the next trip to that satellite office.

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