After scouring flea markets and yard sales, I've found some fabulous treasures. Metals are often unrealized treasures. Tarnished silver and brass look drab and worthless, but there's treasure to be found under there. Avoid the expensive store-bought polishes and create your own. If those fail and the tarnish is here to stay, learn to work around it and see the beauty in your newly found treasures.
Silver Tarnish Dip: Fill your kitchen sink with the hottest water your tap allows. Then, mix 2 tablespoons of salt and 2 tablespoons of baking soda together before adding them to the water. Place a sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom of the sink (use a wooden spoon so you don't scald your hands). This creates ionization which will clean your new treasures. Dip the items for a few seconds at a time, redipping as needed.
Tarnish Scrub: Use white toothpaste to polish the tarnish off of your silver. Rub it onto the silver and continue to polish with a soft cloth. Another option, especially for more tarnished silver, is a baking powder paste made from powder and water. The paste can set for an hour or so if the tarnish is severe.
Anti-Corrosion: Corrosion occurs when the silver comes in contact with certain elements like salt. What might look like tarnish that doesn't come off is corrosion. Try soaking the corroded area in a mixture of two cups of vinegar and one tablespoon of salt, heating the vinegar in the mixture.
Brass Scrub: A simple scrub cleaner can be made for brass as well. Mix one half cup of vinegar with 1 teaspoon of salt and rub with a cloth. Ketchup is also noted as a cleaner, most likely because of the chemical reactions of the acidic tomato base.
Plated items often lose their plating and can't shine like new, revealing the base metal underneath. Try to polish this metal to an appealing shine. I have a 1930's creamer and sugar set that lost most of its plating years ago. The set has distinct character, more than a shiny set would have. I look at it and imagine the woman who owned it. Knowing the decade it came from, the cheap silver plating was probably a luxury to her. Her loving hands washed and polished that silver away while adding something to the piece that no storeroom can offer; a history.
This page contains the following solutions.
To clean tarnished brass, copper and pewter, use a paste with equal parts of white vinegar and table salt.
Here is an easy way to clean brass, copper, and pewter using common household products.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I make one of a kind hand made, bone handle knives with blades of different types of metal. I can say they are unique. So I'm looking for a recipe to make my own homemade metal polish. Then the knives I make will be one hundred percent one of a kind, right down to the shine on the blades.
By David from Dale, OK
I want to polish a brass teakettle and don't want to use commercial polish. Does anyone have a brass polish recipe?
By DC
This page contains homemade brass cleaner recipes. Cleaning your brass items can restore their color and shine.
