Shaving off brass....

[Leszek Vogt]

Howdy,

I've tried the vinegar-salt routine, Flitz, Brasso with amonia, and even 0000 steel wool....and still have splotches on the surface. Grrr!!! After all this, the brass looks good, but the splotches remain. Essentially, I would like to shave off the brass 0.001" or so....and leaving it with cleanly polished surface.

Part of me says, use 2000 sandpaper (or so)....and the other side of the coin: leave the dmn thing alone....which it will irritate me.

Any reasonable workable solutions ? Thanks.

Les

[A_Tabor]

What is the nature of the splotches, and what is it on?

If you have an easy way to post up a macro shot of an affected area it may help people offer more reliable advice to help clear things up for you.

But it is sounding like you may be in need of going back and doing polishing steps from a semi-rough tooling finish to a final mirror smooth polish.

[EdSawyer]

I have a nice buff that I use for polishing metal. It's a serious tool (think: 1hp bench grinder but with much longer shafts) but makes short work of anything like this.

[Jim C.]

As A_Tabor said posting pictures of the splotches might offer you a solution from some of us
that may have encountered similar problems.

You may want to try these -

http://www.dremel.com/en-us/Accessor....aspx?pid=511E

or these -

http://www.dremel.com/en-us/Accessor...pid=EZ474SA-01

I've used them all for cleaning up brass parts and really black brown brass lenses.

[LabRat]

Sometimes the splotches (when removed) are rooted below the surface, and when removed, might leave pitted marks in the brass...

If this is severe, the entire surface needs to be lowered to the same height for the material/finish to be even (not just doing that spot)... You would probably start by removing the part, (I assume it is flat) and laying it on a flat surface, start by using a 320 grit emery paper (on fingers or block) over the entire piece evenly to remove the entire surface... Then 400, 600, 800, etc down to 2500 (there is an assortment pack of fine papers at your auto store in the auto body section)... Rinse the papers frequently while using to prevent them clogging up... Then rubbing and finally polishing compounds...

You can consider nickel plating all the parts (for not a lot of $$$)...

Steve K

[Steven Tribe]

Drops of chemicals can have nasty effects on brass if they have a special interest in either the zinc or copper. Mostly the zink is leached out and the process continues down into the surface until the chemical is "used up". The result is a skin of zink and copper oxides (and worse) which still looks metallic but isn't.