Cleaning Brass, Copper or Bronze

[montyburns]

I found a product to clean copper. bronze or brass that removes the crud but doesn't etch the metal. It's a product called "Kaboom". Soak your items for a few hours and then hit them with a bristle brush and a lot of the corrosion will melt away without harming the surface. I watched their ad on TV where they show how it cleans a penny and tried it a few times on some less than valuable trinkets. They came clean and in most cases looked almost new after soaking for 2 to 6 hours in the product. Give it a try on something you aren't afraid to ruin and see how it works for you. So far I have detected no discernable damage to any of my things. Jim

[JoAnne]

If this is Kaboom the bathroom cleaner be very careful. It took the surface right off my bathroom sink and tub. It is very harsh stuff.

[montyburns]

The cleaner is not caustic and will not harm brass, copper or bronze, or your hands. The bottle has a warning not to use it on aluminum, frosted glass or galvanized metal. Combined with those metals it causes a chemical reaction. My bathtubs are fiberglass and my sinks are marble and it hasn't harmed them or the chrome fittings. That's why I put the sentence to first test it on something you aren't afraid to ruin. Monty

[montyburns]

Will be glad to as soon as I can figure out how to attach a pix! Monty

[Gregory]

Originally Posted by montyburns

Will be glad to as soon as I can figure out how to attach a pix! Monty

Hi Monty,

Taken from the FAQ:

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[carolinachief]

I did a little experimenting and below you will find my results. I soaked a quarter and a dime overnight in Kaboom. It seemed to eat the outer layer completely off. There is no silver finish at all left on the quarter and you can see how pitted the dime looks. The coin "smoothness" is totally gone as well. Overnight is definitely too long to leave anything soaking. May try and do a couple more experiments. Happy hunting all.

[Dugday]

I'd take those coins out of state and spend them quick! boy did that stuff clean em. Ithink you where right over night is to longggggg.

[abmm]

Sorry for dredging up the necropost... didn't see the need to create a new thread.

We find a LOT of spent rifle, machinegun and pistol cartridges in our travels. Usually they are badly tarnished and we often need to see the data stamped on the base in order to positively identify them.

I did a bit of research on the net and discovered that nuclear chilli sauce (burns twice ) is a great cleaning agent for old brass and other metals. after cleaning, I chucked all of our rare brass into a container and covered it with "Fire in the Hole" brand chilli sauce overnight.

I washed em th enext morning and discovered to my dismay that the sauce had stripped out a component of the brass alloy leaving what looked like a copper cartridge case. Very disappointing! But the data on the base of even the cruddiest .30 M1 carbine shell is now readable. A big lesson learned here was to maybe use ONE less rare shell to test it out rather than a whole container full.

After witnessing how effective the chilli sauce was I found myself thinking "And we eat that stuff?!?"

I'm still experimenting with the right amount of time to leave brass in this stuff. So I'll post my results when they come to hand.

[majakldragon]

And we always thought uncers were caused by stress or a virus.

[Buster]

That is so cool...Buster....