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Cleaning Badly Tarnished Brass
Q. I have an 18th century lamp with brass parts that have oxidized so bad I can't get them clean. It belonged to my husband's family and I would love to restore the brass. The remainder of the lamp is two shades of etched colored glass that is beautiful and the entire lamp is very ornate including the brass parts which makes it extremely hard to clean unless I could find a very powerful dip.
Can anyone help? At this point the lamp might as well be trashed. Thanks,
Nan Anderson- Clemmons, North Carolina
2001
A. I have experimented with a lot of brass cleaning products on really crummy oxidation. One sequence I have found to be helpful is to start out with a wet paste of 'Barkeepers Friend
⇦ on
eBay
or
Amazon [affil links] ' powder on an old Terry Cloth washcloth and rub the Heck out of the piece.
You better have on some rubber gloves
⇦ on
eBay or
Amazon [affil links] as it eats your skin up if used for any period of time. We used to be able to find Twinkle brass cleaner
⇦ on
eBay or
Amazon [affil links]
which worked as the next step but haven't found it lately. We had to substitute Wright's Copper Cream ⇨
which I think worked better than Twinkle actually.
How you proceed from step 3 is up to you. I have tried motorized polishing bonnets with bar abrasives for polishing metal of different grits, as well as Dremel
⇦ on
eBay or
Amazon [affil links] bonnets with Maas metal polish
⇦ on
eBay or
Amazon [affil links]
, Wenol
⇦ on
eBay
or
Amazon [affil links]
, etc. and they all work well. I think the Brasso
⇦ on
eBay
or
Amazon [affil links] liquid product works OK but not as highly polished as you get maybe with MAAS metal polish. You want to thoroughly wash off any residue and spray a protective clear coating on when you are done.
I am still hunting for the perfect clear coat.
- ORLANDO, Florida
2005
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