How can I tarnish or dull bright brass

A. Hi Heather. People can be envisioning rather different things when they say they want to dull the brass, but since you mentioned "rub", there are wax rubs ([on eBay or Amazon] ) with different tints available.
Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Jim. liver of sulfur [on eBay or Amazon] will darken brass (if what you are looking at is actually brass, but it's not always easy to tell).

A. toilet bowl cleaner [affil links]

Leave it on for a week and it'll turn it nice and dark

Conversely it'll shine your metal right up if you wipe it on and then right off.

Wear rubber gloves [on eBay or Amazon] (it has acid -- I believe hydrochloric).

I use it to age bronze cymbals. It not only changes how they look, but mellows the tone for jazz and acoustic music.

A. You need to make sure it is real brass and not just stay brite over top of some other metal. If it is brass then there is probably a light layer of film over it that stops the brass from tarnishing. Take off the brass fixtures and rub them on a carpet with a generally heavy amount of force. Then try shining it up with Brasso [on eBay or Amazon] metal polish. if the cloth with Brasso turns black, you should have taken the film off. General use will now tarnish the brass. The oils in your hands help speed along the process too.

A. Hi Sheryl. Unless the shower doors were very expensive (say over $1000), they're not brass; they are anodized aluminum, and can't be darkened except by coating the aluminum with paint, or something opaque or only slightly translucent. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Michael. Well, the easiest way is paint. But the most authentic looking way is probably to "tin" them. We have several letters on line about historical tinning of copper pots and pans. Use those words in the google custom search engine. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi, Donald. The bad news is it's probably not brass plating; it's probably a brass-toned lacquer over nickel plating -- which is why the color disappeared when you used certain solvents that dissolved the lacquer. Imitation brass plating is cheaper and more environmentally acceptable than brass plating, so it's getting quite common, but it's obviously a big problem when you want it to act like real brass and it won't.

I would suggest that you try an antique Rub'N'Buff [affil links] and see how the color looks and how long it lasts. Happy fishing.

Regards,

A. Hi Kimberly. If the buckle is solid brass you can remove the lacquer coating on it and then use liver of sulfur [on eBay or Amazon] or brass darkening solutions [on eBay or Amazon] (or just let it tarnish naturally). If it's a real Gucci, the buckle might be brass. But if it's anodized aluminum, those solutions won't do anything -- and the thing is, consumers will rarely know what something is actually made of. But brass is heavy and aluminum is light, maybe you can tell from the weight? If it's aluminum you are probably limited to getting some tinting dye to add to lacquer or polyurethane before brushing it on. Good luck.

Regards,