Lionel lines trains are fun to play with. They are nice to hold in your hands and run them over the tracks. Personally, I get most satisfaction from restoring pre-war cars and engines that I obtain as overpainted, rusted wrecks and like to turn them into shining gems. This blogsite tells you about my evening hours.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Removing corrosion from brass plates
The Lionel 812 was in poor condition when it arrived. The tin plate was corroded on many places. In one place the corroded tin-plate contacted the brass plate directly and made it turn dark brown (second plate from the left on the photo). Although I do not understand the chemistry completely, but then the exact composition of the tin-plate and the brass are also unknown, it is clear that the brass was affected quiet strongly. I tried to clean this dark-brown brass with a household brass cleaner, metal polish, washing and basically it did not work. Only carefull light sanding did the trick and got the brass back in original luster. I am still sanding and polishing, but it alreday looks much better.
The photo's on the left show the plates when I started cleaning and on the right how they are now.
No comments:
Post a Comment