Help please!!!!

[STEBALIN]

Gentlemen,

I have a serious problem.
I stupidly tried to polish the stained rank stripes of a navy uniform with a metal polishing liquid, and it didn´t get any good results. The problem is, after 4 days, the brass thread became GREEN!!! how can I restore this stripe to their normal look???
Help me please!!!

[Paul R.]

Did you try to re wipe of the green gunk with a clean cloth with no polish? What was the brand name of that polish? I hope not a brasso cleaner. Can you post photos. Paul

[Tim B.]

Ah! Paint over it with red lead, that covers everything! Just kidding, old Navy joke. I can't understand why anyone would try to polish stripes on a uniform though, but...

You might get lucky; take it to a cleaners and see if steaming it would remove the vedigres and possibly make the thread more vibrant, though at this point you better just settle for getting the green out.

Good luck!
Tim

[STEBALIN]

I hope not a brasso cleaner.

It was actually brasso what I used.

here´s a pic.
[img=http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9074/bb002ol8.th.jpg]

[Paul R.]

Stebalin. This type of a brass is called common soft brass nicked name naval brass. Which has a high copper 70% , zinc 20, and 3% tin along with other medals of composition. Brasso has a ingredient called stoddard solvent. Which reacts to the copper/zinc ingredients causing a deterioration of all the medals. That why it took a bit to turn green. Also if there was any left over garment cleaning solvent (from dry cleaning) it helped excell the deterioration. There is not much you can do at this point. I would use fresh cool water on a Q-tip to nutralize any left over brasso. There is really nothing that can be done at this point. Sorry Paul

[STEBALIN]

I could wash away mosst of the green dirt with water and soap.
This was a well learnt lesson; I´ll never polish nor restore any items ever.

Thanks Paul and Tim!