Dried-on Brasso removal

A. Your best bet is to soak in warm soapy water, use Ivory Dish washing soap, let it sit for 5 minutes, then use a toothbrush to loosen the white chalk like powder.

Turpentine [on eBay or Amazon] also works wonderful in cleaning crevices.

A. Brasso is a petroleum-based product. So think of greasy residue. Grease remover (409k, etc.) is excellent way to quickly and easily clean off Brasso. You may notice that on the first pass with Brasso, the paste combines with the oxidation on the brass to form a black paste. Remove that paste with a degreaser spray, pat dry the item, and then make a second cleaning pass. You will get a great deal of the tarnish removed in no time, and leave NO oily residue! I do not recommend acids (Lemon Juice, vinegar) or even a base (Ammonia), as they can dissolve some of the brass.

A. Since my son started playing tuba I have jumped in and have developed a hobby of restoring (or attempting to) old Brasswind instruments. Many of them are large brass or silver plated brass. Many hours have been devoted to stripping the lacquer off, or what's left of it and cleaning up the brass, inside and out. Brasso is still one of the best cleaners because it contains an abrasive. I have found that it is best to stop every couple of hours and wash the instrument off in dish washing soap and warm water. This prevents the Brasso from solidifying. One of the biggest problems with using Brasso inside of a musical instrument is that 100% of the Brasso residue needs to be removed when all of the cleaning is done. The abrasive is what is left in the residue film that you see on the brass. This abrasive can be quite harmful to the valve section and slides if left on as these are moving parts. One product that has worked well for removing the Brasso residue or insuring that it is gone is a cleaning product that is sold by a musical repair equipment and supply company named Feree's Tool www.ferreestools.com They sell a product called "Ferree's Cold Cleaner" that works well for a final wipe down after the Brasso cleaning and washing is done. It really does work well, I would not spend any time cleaning with Brasso without having some around.

I came to this website using the key words "Brasso dried in filigrie" - I had let the product dry on a 100 year old bronze plate! After polishing, polishing, soaking in water, the way it was removed beautifully was: Pure Lemon Juice, toothbrush and a lot of baby wipes (in small areas). Good luck to you all!

Hi just read this as I needed to remove Brasso from an antique crumpet warmer as a surprise present for my husband. The inside was coated in the horrible stuff by someone who had been Brasso mad and I wanted it to be used as it was made. Thanks to the person who suggested lemon juice, I mixed with fine salt and it cleared it all. Just rinsed with warm soapy water. Dishwasher didn't even touch it beforehand. Good luck.

A. Using lemon juice to remove dried Brasso worked just great! I just bought a small wood-lined brass box (at an antiques show. It wasn't much to look at but it is a nice little box and the price was right. It was discounted from an already reasonable price. There was dried Brasso in every possible detail. I found the lemon juice cleaning method on this site. The piece can't be submerged in soapy water since it is a wood lined box. I set up three containers (1) lemon juice, (2) soapy water and, (3) rinse water.

I scrubbed a small section at a time with the lemon juice, quickly rinsed with a paper towel from the soapy water then a paper towel with rinse water. I dried each section as I worked. The box is just lovely with detail and painted design. I'm guessing the vendor could have asked for, and gotten, twice what she did (nearly three times what I paid) if someone had taken the time to clean it.

A. I had a 36" middle-eastern brass table top tray that was intricately etched with a design. Someone tried to clean it long ago and left brass cleaner in all the crevices which dried to a very hard white powder. I tried soaking, toothbrush, lemon juice, etc but nothing worked. I read somewhere to soak it with WD-40 [on eBay or Amazon] , cover it with a rag, then cover it all with plastic (I used grocery bags). I let it sit for two days then washed it with dish soap and hot water until all the oil was removed. The majority of the white residue came off and the rest was easily rubbed out with an old toothbrush. The tarnished brass patina stayed intact which was a secondary plus for me. It looks like a very old but well preserved brass tray. Just what I wanted.

A. In a hurry I forgot to soak, but a quick rub with lemon juice cleaned up my antique engraved brass tray beautifully. All the dried-on chalky brass cleaner vanished. Now it looks too new. LOL.