Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Shining the brass.......



What a difference a day makes!  I now smell like vinegar on my hands but with some scrubbing and polishing the bell has been transformed.  Vinegar and salt is a poor man's recipe to clean the tarnish off  of brass. When you enlarge the photo you can see I left some little scratches in it with my wife's sponge scratch pad. I will get some emery paper out and shine it.




A composition of sleigh bells.  Some of my blogger friends didn't know what these bells were.  When they would harness up the horses to pull sleighs through snow, they would drape leather straps on the horses.  On the straps were attached brass bells.  They would jingle in a rhythm as the horse would trot along pulling along the sleigh. 
The bells are heavy pieces when you lift the bigger sizes of bells.  They aren't the thin aluminum types.  They are made by casting them in a mold and you can see in the front bell that one of  the hole of that bell didn't fall out or get removed. As thick as the metal is, I can understand why they didn't even try.  The mold must have had a flaw.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are right - what a difference. I've always thought it would be fun to go on a sleigh ride and listen to the rhythm of the bells. Another interesting and unique post Larry.

The Retired One said...

These were both great,I enjoyed seeing them!

Gigi Ann said...

They cleaned up nice. I'm sure it took a lot of elbow grease to get them to look so good.

Les Barr said...

Yha know Larry, I would think that Brasso might just work better. I've used this on a few occasions, and it shines brass real good. I learned about this stuff while serving in the US Navy. I still use it to this day. Works fine on my Golf putter. Keeps it nice and shiny.

claude said...

I do not know why but I cannot translate your post. I can tell you to polish my copper plates and saucepans i use vinegar and salt too.

Far Side of Fifty said...

Just like magic..this old bell looks almost like new..but with more character:)

L. D. said...

Yes brasso would work great but I am too impatient to get out to a store to buy it. I probably will as I want to do a refined finish on these guys with some wet, dry paper.

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