Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Paste to Clean Brass
Soft soap, 2 ounces; rotten-stone, 4 ounces; beat them to a paste. Or: Rotten stone made into a paste with sweet oil. Or: Rotten-stone, 4 ounces; oxalic acid, 1 ounce; sweet oil, 1½ ounces; turpentine enough to make a paste.
The first and last are best applied with a little turpentine, or sweet oil. Both require friction with soft leather. copper. According to the proportions ob- water. The second, with a little spirits of served between the zinc and the copper in the composition of the brass, so will the tints obtained vary. In many instances it requires the employment of a slight degree of friction, with a resinous or waxy varnish, to bring out the wary appearance characteristic of moiré, which is also singularly enhanced by dropping a few iron nails into the bath.