Cleaning Brass?

I found a nice old pair of Aesthetic movement andirons at a garage sale today (cheap!)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1749.jpg

They are tarnished and have some paint splatters on them. The brass part is solid brass as a magnet doesn't stick and the dings on them from banging together show brass. Any suggestions on cleaning them without wrecking them. Any advice would be appreciated. I have used brasso and 0000 steel woll on brass in the past but I really like these and do not want to compromise them by being overzealous. If you remove the nut on the bottom the brass parts separate into 5 easy to work with pieces.

Zeke, those are very nice! I`m one of those that like to polish a lot and have a bench buffer with the cotton wheels and different compounds. I like the Mothers and Wenol to polish by hand. But These andiorns havwe a very nice patina from the pic and I would be tempted to clean the paint off with denatured alchol and leave them as is. A spray clear coat wouldnt look bad either. Great find ! 8)

Zeke,

If you are planning of keeping them for some time go ahead a polish them and don't worry about it.  What ever patina you remove in your polishing effort will return in about 5 years anyway.  Brass gains a patina much more rapidly than your finished wooden furniture.  You should begin to see a difference within a single year.  If you wish to speed up the process, there are chemicals that can give you an instant patina in a wide variety of shades.

Michael

Hey Michael,

Good advice and that's exactly what i did. It was impossible to remove the paint and crud without removing the patina so I took them apart and soaked them in ammonia. A little 0000 steel wool and voila! I'm sure that over time they will tarnish again and regain that nice color.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1820.jpg

Thanks Michael