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

Is It Leather Or Steel ?

I started this project last night. I had about an hour to kill before this t.v. show came on , so I decided to go downstairs and play around with the steam trunk. I was inspecting it, wondering where to begin, and assessing the years of abuse and damage that the steam trunk had endured. There's just so much work to be done to this thing.

While looking at a crack in what I thought was metal trim, I realized it was leather. The leather had grown so old and dried out it appears to be almost petrified. It really looked and felt like metal trim. Not knowing where to begin, I decided to give the leather a bit of a treatment and see if I could soften it up a bit.

I should of taken a picture of the crack but will get back to that in another post when we try to actually repair the crack. For now , the task at hand was to apply some leather conditioner to the trim and see if we could soften it up a bit. I had some leather cleaner/conditioner in my shoebox , so I got an old sock put some conditioner on it and started working it into the leather trim. As the dirt came off, the trim lost its black, brassy appearance and began to take on the brown hue of leather again.

I did this for two reasons:

1. I had nothing better to do and what could it hurt.
2. If I worked on the leather trim in this dried out condition it would just crack apart.

So in order to avoid possibility two when it comes time to do some real work on this trim, I gave it a good rub down with some conditioner/cleaner. As you can see from the picture this leather is still going to need a lot of work. I did check the trim in the morning and it does appear to of softened up a bit. This took about 30 minutes and will be worth the time if we can save the trim from cracking apart when its time to work on it.  I will probably do this a couple more times before actually working on the leather trim.

If your restoring one of these and the leather is old and dried out I would suggest doing this. You will need:

1. An old sock
2. A good leather conditioner

Just rub the conditioner into the leather trim of the steam trunk and try to get as close to the edges as possible without getting it into the wood or canvas panels that the trim is attached to. I did this to all the leather parts on the steam trunk. This will save you a big headache down the road.

So far I have 30 minutes invested into this project and because I had the leather conditioner already it cost me nothing. 30 minutes 0 dollars so far.

The next thing I plan on doing is getting rid of that ugly pink paint !