Menorah Repairs

I can polish, repair and restore sterling silver, silver plate, and brass menorahs. Send me photos and let me know what you need to be done. A frequent request is to replace a Shamash that is lost. While I can make anything, there are no replacement parts. Replacing the Shamash is always a custom made one-of-a-kind part plus the reconstruction of the arm or attachment.

Custom Menorah Restoration

Custom restoration of antique Menorah and fabrication of Star of David

This old brass Menorah arrived with very bent up arms (photo below left.) and missing the original Star of David that went on top. It had a fragment of the original Star of David so I knew the thickness of the metal and the client had a photo of this Menorah so I could redraw the Star of David dimensions relative to the Menorah size. (photo below right.) Below these images you can see two different videos of the sawing to cut the Star of David so it looked flawed like the original. This is all custom restoration.

Cutting a new Star of David (shown in the video above and below ) was a major effort taking eight and a half hours to cut by hand. Look at the videos and turn on the sound. After all the repair work, the customer choose to have this polished. This custom work cutting out the Star of David by hand, and then softening the edges, kept the slightly primitive aesthetic of this Menorah.

Custom Shamash Replacement

Custom-made Shamash for a traditional antique brass Menorah / Hannukiah
Unfortunately, the Shamash is often lost on these antique Menorahs as it was designed to be removable. It is much better to use the candle as a Shamash. The replacement Shamash was custom-made to match this antique Menorah exactly with both a matching arm and candle cup which I fabricated to match. These projects are multi-step and take months. It requires a custom one-of-a-kind shrink-proof mold to cast a matching candle cup. That was just the beginning.

Custom made Shamash to replace missing Shamash

The 100-year-old brass Menorah was missing the original Shamash. The original was lost a long time ago. I had one of the candle cups cast in a one-of-a-kind non-shrink mold so it matched exactly. Then I fabricated a post and structure for the new Shamash to fit into the existing structure of the Menorah. After all the fabrication, the Menorah was polished as the final step. This was an expensive repair because of one-of-a-kind casting for an exact duplicate of the other candle cups. It also takes a lot of time to fabricate a new Shamash holder that will sit at exactly the right height with modifications so it would not swing side to side and melt the other candles.

Sterling silver Menorah
Repair and Polishing

This sterling silver Menorah  arrived for repair and polishing.  The arms would no longer sit on top and were held in place with white first-aid tape. It was originally purchased in Israel in the mid-20th century.  The customer wanted the arms to firmly sit on top, but be easy to disassemble for polishing without needing special tools.

Watch this video to see this innovative repair that avoided altering  the original menorah and satisfied the customers expectations. After the repair the lacquer was removed from the candlestick, and the menorah was polished. It turned out amazing. 

Repair of 20th-Century Sterling Silver Menorah

This Menorah is an example of late 20th-century Judaica. My observation is that it was made from silver that was way to thin to survive generations. Yes, I was able to repair this by reinforcing it on the inside and the outside of where it broke. The bent candle cups were also straightened. Still, that Menorah will always be fragile, the sterling silver is as thin as a piece of paper. When using your Menorah support the candle cups when inserting candles. Polish very gently with Q-tips and make-up squares.

Sterling Silver Menorah Base with Bent Feet

In the below photo you can see that the feet of this sterling silver menorah base had been badly bent. Even though this is a simple base, if it isn’t sitting flat and is rocking back and forth, it becomes a hazard. Aside from the bent feet, the base was otherwise in decent shape. As you can see in the after photos, I was able to straighten out the feet. The base was not heavily polished so that it would match the menorah attachments that were not sent to me. The owner wanted to make sure that the menorah would still be useable and thought that if it were too polished people might be afraid to handle it. The customer was very happy with the results.

Antique Silver Plate
Menorah Restoration

Antique silver plate and gold plated Hanukkian Before and After Restoration

Very often these old menorahs no longer screw together because the screws are broken or the screw threads are damaged. This is a time consuming repair because the old screws are rarely standard sizes. It takes hours to figure out the best size for taping new threads and replacing the screws and nuts with solid brass screws. It takes hours. In this case after making sure everything screwed together, I modified the Shamash so it was stable. Then after removing the gold plated decorative elements, the rest of the Hanukkian was silver plated.

Restoration of vintage
Mid-20th Century Menorah 

This vintage mid-20th century Chanukah Menorah was missing a candle cup for the shamash. The challenge was to make a new candle cup that matched both the shape and the aesthetic of the original menorah. An additional concern was to avoid damaging the oxidized patina and original finish on the rest of this menorah constructed from sterling silver, brass and copper. 

Cast Brass Menorahs

Cast brass Menorah Restoration

All cast brass Menorahs are brittle. It is the nature of the material. There are no parts to purchase. Everything is custom made to match your Menorah exactly. There are no short cuts.

200-Year-Old Brass Menorah Shabbat candlestick Restored

This old menorah arrived mostly in pieces. Nothing screwed together properly. I guess that it was 200 years old as many of the screws were hand made tapered screws and inconsistent with modern threads. It was obvious that it had many old repairs. Many of the parts did not screw together. It took me close to eight months to figure out a solution that was as conservative as possible. On very old objects, I want my restoration to avoid significant modifications.

“Why does it have two Shamas?” I asked. The family story was that the two candleholders in front were for Shabbat candles. So when Chanukah candles were lit during Shabbat there was would be a place for the Shabbos candles.

Mid 20th century Menorah before and after repair and polishing

This mid-20th century menorah was dirty, tarnished and broken. One of the candle cups had fallen off, three others were loose. It is important to have an object like this repaired before the candle cups are lost. After the repair, this menorah was cleaned removing old dusty wax, and then the brass was polished very carefully to avoid the painted/patina finish on the arm. One side says, Israel in English. The other side is Hebrew.

All of these menorahs are cast brass from the mid-20th century.  After they were repaired they were polished to restore their appearance. 

Notice how the brass Menorah with lions is so similar to the 200-year-old Menorah (shown above.) These motifs are reused over and over through the years and are not an indication of age.