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Cleaning old locks

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I have lots of old locks made out of steel, gold, iron, brass, copper and un knows how do I clean them with out damaging them.

Aron Randall
- Alpheratta, Georgia, USA

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You can use citric acid solution(5%), or ammonium citrate solution(mixture of 5o gm citric acid/1 lit water+ some ammonia(25%), pH of solutions must be 3,5 for iron and steel, pH 9 for copper and its alloys, last solution can be used for gilt pieces,i n principle one solution for one metal). WD-40 [linked by editor to product info at Amazon] or Ballistol can be used too (works very slow).

Good luck!

Goran Budija
- Zagreb, Croatia

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