Brass cleaning

[Brittany]

I would like to clean up the brass on my Hawkens, The stock plate has gotten pertty bad. What is the best way.

Charlie

[pietro]

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Although I'm a firm fan of the look/color/patina of aged brass on my frontstuffers, for those who prefer the bling, BRASSO (Home Cheapo, hardware stores) is the way to go.

If somebody likes a CCH look to their brass, a few daubs of cold blue onto brass, that's had it's protective clear lacquer coating removed, can look nice too.



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[fouronesix]

All collectors and most who appreciate brass (or any other nonferrous metal) furniture on muzzleloaders actually prefer the darkening and "mustard" look of patinated brass on muzzleloaders.

Brasso will do it if you like shiny bling.

[swamp]

I prefer Flitz for polishing. Less abrassive than Brasso and it seems to leave coating that lets the brass stay shiney for a bit longer. Had enough of Brasso in the Army.
swamp

[fouronesix]

Better yet, just plate the brass with chrome then damp paper towel to keep clean. No corrosion and no more worries.

[country gent]

Never Dull polishing cloth will do a great job on brass pewter aluminum and chrome. It is a age old product and been a solid performer always.

[fouronesix]

Seriously, if you are bound and determined to do it, there is a very long list of brass polishing and cleaning agents available maybe even including ol' aunt Mabel's special recipe along with Nevr Dull, Simichrome, Brasso, Flitz, so on and so forth. Just do a google search- take your pick. They all work in one fashion or another. Some only do chemical stripping of the "tarnish" layer, some do fine grit polishing along with the chemical cleaning. Make no mistake, once the brass is stripped of tarnish and polished it will be vulnerable to further tarnish- especially if exposed to chemicals like BP fouling- no matter the claim of the polish manufacturer or treatment used.

For longer lasting brass bling. Remove all the brass furniture from the gun. But, the process of doing that increases the chances for buggering screw heads or chipping out the seam between the brass and the wood. However, if you continue to use a brass cleaner without removing the brass from the stock it will, at some time, start to degrade the stock finish, if not the wood itself, surrounding the brass.
Pick your poison.

Once removed from stock, clean with the brass cleaner or polish of your choice. When satisfied, completely clean all residue from brass with acetone or alcohol and a clean paper towel. When dry, spray the brass with a complete, even, single coat of something like Krylon Crystal Clear quick dry gloss finish. Let dry completely. Re-attach brass to stock. That will last a while….. until abrasion from handling or exposure to chemicals exposes the brass again, whereupon the process will have to be repeated to keep that brass shiny. Good luck.

[Omnivore]

Then again it depends on what you mean by "clean up" the brass. If it's a matter of removing the tarnish only, then all the above applies. If it's a matter of "cleaning up" scratches and dents, that's a whole different matter. Depending one how deep the flaws are, and how close they are to the wood, it may involve taking down some of the wood along with the metal, so as to maintain a continuous surface. There you'd want to take a look at how the finishing is done in rifle construction, and there are a number of videos out which show you how it's done. Track of the Wolf for exampe sells a great video on rifle construction, as books also.

As for the mere patina; as has been said already it may or may not be even desireable to bring it to a high polish, and it is a temporary thing anyway. The best way to keep the brass on a firearm all nice and mirror shiny is to lock the gun up behind glass and leave it there, never handling it.

By "stock plate" I can only assume you mean buttplate, and that goes on the ground for loading the piece. Unless you're one of those people who ALWAYS uses a nice, clean piece of suede leather on the ground to protect your shiny buttplate during loading, you can expect scratches and dings on the buttplate as a regular part of the rifle. Besides all that, the metal buttplate has in the past been considered to be the business end of an impact weapon, which is where the term "gunning [someone] down" came from.

[Dixiejack]

I prefer Flitz for polishing. Less abrassive than Brasso and it seems to leave coating that lets the brass stay shiney for a bit longer. Had enough of Brasso in the Army.
swamp

swamp, I agree with you. If I never see another can of Brasso, it will be too soon. Ran across one of my old brass buckles that had all different colors of corrosion on it and thought about the time I knocked over a can of Brasso about 10 min. before our Sat. morning inspection. Man, did I get a royal *** chewing. Lucky I was on the second floor of the barracks and got it cleaned up, but I got another *** chewing from the CO, because there was a dull spot on the floor in front of my foot locker. No pass that weekend.

[ejcrist]

I just leave mine tarnish because it's too much work to try to keep brass looking new if you're using it. Like Omnivore said, the only way to keep it shiny is to lock it up in the vault and never touch it. Also, shiny brass doesn't work too well if you're using it for hunting.

[beroen]

If I want to make my muzzleloaders pretty I take all the brass and inlays off and hit them with "never dull" then I hit the stock with about 2-4 Coats "SC Johnson paste wax" I would never do this to a original but Damn the replicas look good cleaned up. You can actually put all your hardware and inlays back on and wax over them to prevent tarnish

[beroen]

I Also at some point as a kid got into the habit of putting my butstock on the top of my foot (turned sideways of course) when I reloaded so it is possible to keep it out of the dirt with out carrying a piece of leather around (never seen that one before myself)

[Omnivore]

...got into the habit of putting my butstock on the top of my foot...

I've done that too, to keep the butt out of mud, but also my boots have metal lace eyelets and hooks. Still would need the leather to protect your mirror finish buttplate from scratches and dings from the boots themselves, and that's assuming your boots don't have dried mud or some such on them.

[ohland]

knocked over a can of Brasso.. was a dull spot on the floor

Not that anyone would do it nowdays, but never use a lighter too long when you warm up a tin of shoe polish. When the shoe polish lights up, your first instinct is to throw it away from you... And when the hot polish hits the waxed floor, it bonds nicely.

Other than that, Ft Lewis was a good place....

[Eddie17]

Finishing a foe off with the butt of a rifle term?
Is that what you are saying. I have never heard of of this.
Do you have sources? Interresting info!

[johnson1942]

when i build a brass mounted rifle i wet sand with grits with emery paper that go to 2000 so they are 100 percent scratch free. then i polish on a buffing wheel with jewelers polish. it is as polished as it can possibly get. like yellow chome. how ever if you dont coat it is starts get a patina and i never coat and i let that happen. looks good with a patina, as it is totally scratch free.

[Omnivore]

Eddie17; Yes. I got that from Col. Jeff Cooper's writings, and since he said it I have to assume that it is true. Beyond that I have not collected any historical information, but I bet you can find the use of a rifle butt as a weapon in some of the old military manuals. Blade on one end, blunt force striking surface on the other. I'm going out on a limb here though, as I say. An eight to ten pound rifle with a metal buttplate, thrusted with all the weight in-line, would certainly make a formidable striking weapon, with the heel as a more focused instrument.

And; Brittany seems to have left the building.

[BruceB]

The "butt stroke" is, or at least WAS, a regular part of Infantry training. There is no question about that.

Even after the FAL (C1/C1A1) rifle had been adopted by the Canadian Army ('60s), we were trained extensively in butt-stroking an opponent as the follow-through to a parry of his bayonet thrust.

It is truly a brutal and effective technique, and death is the DESIRED outcome.

Bayonet training in general is viewed as a motivational tool, intended to create a willingness to close with the enemy and kill him with maximum violence at zero distance.... quite different from shooting him a couple hundred yards away.

I once owned a Snider rifle with the marks of someone's incisor teeth driven deeply into the top of the butt ahead of the buttplate. That rifle also had human blood caked around the buttplate and in the lock recess. (Teeth marks identified by my dentist, and blood by an RCMP lab man.) Clearly, that rifle was a veteran of some desperate hand-to-hand battle somewhere in the British Empire..... and someone had received the butt-stroke right in his teeth.

[pietro]

.


FWIW, I've personally come across the evidence that a buttstroke was used on at least one rifle - When I removed the steel buttplate from a 7x57 Spanish 1893 Mauser, there was a dried brown grunge between the BP and the raw end of the rifle's stock, that turned blood red as I wiped it off with a wet rag.



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[Brittany]

Not True. I have been resting my eyes. Was thinking also that as rough as the plate is maybe I should build a leather cover for the plate. I bought the gun used and I think the old owner just put the stock down anywhere to load. So it real rufffff.