How to Safely Clean the Items You’ve Purchased from Top Brass Suppliers

1. May 18, 2018 How to Safely Clean the Items You’ve Purchased from Top Brass Suppliers Brass furniture can make your home look bright and elegant. The shimmering reflection they create can brighten up every nook and cranny in every room. Unfortunately, this sheen doesn’t last forever. In fact, it can easily be overshadowed by tarnish as the furniture’s surfaces get exposed to oxygen. Fortunately, though, there are ways to make your brass items shiny again. Why does brass tarnish? 1 | P a g e

2. Before cleaning and polishing your brass furniture, it helps to first understand why brass tarnishes in the first place. Well, you may think that tarnish indicates damage or deterioration. In truth, it’s the other way around. The tarnish is the beginning of a process called patination, or the creation of a protective layer as a reaction to oxidation. That tarnish is actually protecting your brass furniture from damage. The problem with tarnish is that it makes brass surface look pale and unattractive. Unless you intend to make your brass furniture look rustic and antique, you have no other choice but to clean and polish them every now and then to bring back their luster. Is it solid brass or just a coating? Brass is an expensive metal because its base metals are hard to mine and it requires a quite complex alloying process. This is also why most items made of pure brass cost more than those made of iron or aluminum, which is more abundant in supply. When a piece of brass furniture is offered to you for an unreasonably low price, it could be a red flag that the furniture is not made of pure brass. There’s a way to determine if a furniture is pure brass or not. Hold a piece of magnet near the surface of you brass furniture. If the magnet doesn’t cling to the furniture, it means the furniture is pure brass. If it does, the furniture could be made of iron and just coated or plated with brass. It is important to know this because the cleaning method required for brass-plated furniture pieces may be different from that required for pure brass items. Cleaning and Buffing The first step to restoring the luster of your brass furniture is to get rid of dirt and stains from its surface. Wash the item with soap and water until the surface is all clean. This won’t remove the tarnish but at least you’ve eradicated hard particles that can stick to the cloth and potentially scratch your furniture as you rub on its surface. Dry the furniture and ready the materials you need for buffing. All you need is a piece of cloth and a burnishing substance. You may use commercially available metal polish but if you like a more natural and cost-effective approach, there are alternative products that you can use, 2 | P a g e

3. most of them are very likely to be found in your home. Vinegar, for instance, is a natural polishing agent that works just as effectively as over-the-counter products. Catsup and lemon may work, too. Getting Your Brass Supplies from the Best Supplier Proper alloying techniques can produce high-quality brass items with sheen that doesn’t easily fade. This means you don’t have to clean and burnish your furniture very often. You can find these materials from reputable brass suppliers, such as Rotax Metals. Buying from a trusted supplier can help you get the most bang for your buck. Sources: How to Polish Brass, realsimple.com How to clean brass naturally, mnn.com 3 | P a g e