How to clean a silver plated trombone

Letter 24092

How to clean a silver plated trombone

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I bought a silver trombone for my son at Christmas. I am pretty sure it is silver plated. What would clean the tarnish on of it? The polishing cloth doesn't do the trick. I asked the company I bought it from but they didn't have an answer.

Susan Howard
- Middletown, Ohio

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Hello,

Your son's trombone probably has a lacquer finish on it that prevents the silver polish from doing its thing. You'll have to strip the lacquer off before you will be able to polish the silver. If it has the manufacturer's original finish, it is probably an epoxy coating that has been baked on. Stripping this type of coating involves nasty caustic strippers, so you might be better off handing this over to a professional musical instrument repair technician.

Jake Koch
G. J. Nikolas & Co., Inc.

Bellwood, Illinois

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Badly tarnished trombone! I used Nevr-Dull [link is to product info at Amazon] and it worked well on the slide.

However took forever and the horn is worse and not as simple to clean. Any suggestions?

Rachel
buyer - Ruffsdale, Pennsylvania

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Different polishes are optimized to do different things. Revere offers their Revere copper cleaner [link is to product info at Amazon], which has to be very powerful and fast acting to shine the bottom of copper pots. Maybe polish with that first, which will instantly remove the brass tarnish from your trombone, then use your Nevr-Dull [link is to product info at Amazon] again. Good luck!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
finishing.com
Brick, New Jersey

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