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

First Some Brass Work

I started removing the ugly pink paint the other night. If you haven't realized yet I'm very excited about getting rid of this hideous color. I know once that ugly pink paint is removed , and the natural wood underneath is revealed, this thing is going to look soooo much better.

As I started stripping the ugly pink paint from the bottom rear panel, I noticed how bad the corner brackets and other metal parts had corroded with time. Now the ugly pink paint was applied over the original canvas on the outside of the trunk. Sad that someone did that, however the good news is that the natural wood underneath is protected by the ugly pink painted canvas. I then thought why would I remove all the ugly pink painted canvas and leave the natural wood exposed while I clean and polish the metal pieces. So after removing the paint covered canvas from the bottom panel the other night I decided to leave the rest and clean and polish the metal work on the trunk today. When I return to removing the paint from the rest of the trunk I will post how I did it with instructions.

I did discover a small crack on the bottom rear panel after removing the canvas. I'll have to figure out what to do about that later. Any suggestions ?

I ran to the store this afternoon, got a couple frozen pizzas for when I get hungry, gulped down an energy drink, got a 12 pack of some decent beer, and plan on polishing and steel wooling the heck out of the brass work and other metal pieces on the trunk. I'll post the details of how I did that and the results in my next blog post.

It only took about 15 minutes to remove the ugly pink painted canvas from the bottom rear panel of the trunk so I'll add that to the project time now. This gives a work hour total of 1 hour and 15 minutes so far. Zero dollars invested.