Polishing Brass Work Completed

The brass work on the trunk is pretty much completed. I say pretty much because I probably could of spent another 8 hours on this and still wouldn't be completely satisfied. However, for the most part I think it came out pretty good. I spent an additional 6.5 hours on completing the brass work. This was accomplished in 4 polishing sessions throughout the week.There is no way I could sit there for 6.5 hours straight doing this.

This is me polishing the trunk brass.

What I thought was brass appears to be brass plated metal on many of the parts. The steel wool did take some of the brass finish off some of the parts.I really don't think there was any way around losing some of the brass finish as the parts were heavily corroded. However the parts now have a shiny, rustic, antique look to them which just adds to the rustic charm of the trunk. I think I'm going to keep this look. I could paint them, or buy some cruddy brush on brass look garbage at the craft store but I think that will take away from the rustic and original look I'm trying to achieve.


The final technique I came up with for polishing the brass was to rub it out with a number 4 coarse steel wool with a dime size drop of brass cleaner on it. After I did all the parts with the number 4 steel wool, I then redid them with a number 0 fine steel wool. When I used the number 0 steel wool I didn't add any brass cleaner and this really got the pieces shining again and added a nice luster to all the parts. They still have some nice antiquing and overall I am very happy with the end result. You can see some before and after pictures in the original post on this subject. Click here for original post.

I have to replace the handles, and the trunk straps, so knowing that I will be removing the fasteners for these parts I didn't spend a lot of time on them. I figure when I take them off, I will buff them out on a machine. These pieces are in really bad shape anyway , I will include some pictures of the trunk parts I remove and how I remove them in another post.

I plan on removing the ugly pink painted canvas this week. I can't wait to get rid of that God forsaken color. I know this trunk is going to look so much better once it's stripped down to its natural wood. I'll post those pictures in the next couple days.

As I posted earlier, I think this is gonna become more of a refurbish job than a restore.This trunk has been severely damaged over the years. The more I work on this thing, the more cracks and blemishes I find in it.

Project time for this post : 6.5 hours
Total time spent on project so far : 9 hours
Total project cost so far : $11.64 USD