Hi

After cleaning brass, copper and aluminum cups they will oxidise and dull quickly. Apply a coat of bees wax which will prevent this. Varnish will also do the same but chips and looks bad very quickly.

HTH

Paula

Those polishing cloths are the way to go because of convience.

I meant to post this when this topic first came out:
I bought six brass shot cups off ebay. In the picture, linked below, the ones on the left are as they arrived. I picked out the best three for C&B and cleaned them with Brasso. I was really impressed how well they cleaned up.

I still need something a little stronger to get the stains out of the inside.

http://www.mythdirection.com/brasso.html

Deerbourne

Use 0000 steel wool to take care of those stains on the inside. It is just a moment's work and it will do the trick.

If there is a jeweler's supply house in your area, you can purchase different kinds of polishing cloths for brass and other metals. There is a kind of cloth called a "Blitz" cloth that is excellent for brass. It's not the jeweler's rouge cloth that Bill Hegbli refers to. There is a different chemical compound in it that really goes after tarnish.

The jeweler's rouge cloths are available from the jeweler's supply houses.

There is a "home center" near where I live that caters to an upscale crowd. They have more different types of metal polish than you can shake a stick at.

Blitz still makes their old brass polishing cloth. It now comes in a ziplock plastic bag. They also have one for copper and for silver.

Goddard's has some excellent polishing mitts.

The jewler's rouge cloth is also available there.

For quick work on brass, if you only have one set to polish, Tarn-X works very nicely.

I found that the Magic Makers cups polish up nicely, but they have a lot of black polishing compound on them, especially on the inside, that needs to be washed off first. Once you do that, you can really make the insides shine nicely.

Thanks for all the help, all of you. I had been using something called, Tarni-Shield, which was OK. But I just tried Brasso, and it was terrific. It really smoothed out the finish. Bill, thanks for the heads up on what to do with the black on the inside of the Magic Makers cups.

Big difference in the look. Thanks for these pics!!!

chris

How can you tell if your cups are real brass or just brass plated?

I don't know how you'd determine if brass plating had been done on top of other non-ferrous metals, but I think test No. 1 would still be the magnet test--if your magnetic TT sticks to the cup, they're *not* solid brass ;-)

Just one note about the brass cups from Magic Makers. I got a few sets to sell at the IBM convention. I figured that if they were at all like the earlier sets I had seen, I would need to spend a lot of time cleaning them up before I could sell them. Evidently, someone at Magic Makers reads these forums closely. I did not need to do much to them at all. There were a couple of cups that had a little polishing compound on them that needed to come off, but that was it.

I have discovered the worlds best polish. It's called FLITZ and I have used it to make all my props look like new. I originally bought it at a county fair and was unable to locate it in any local merchants. You can get a free sample at http://www.flitz.com/

I have used this product to remove scratches from my watch crystal and reading glasses. I repaired a DVD that was scratched (badly). I have polished my wedding band, door handles, heck, I even polished all my keys on my keyring. Funny the uses you can find for this stuff. I have a jumbo coin that is aluminum and after 5 minutes rubbing it with Flitz, it looks like I had it dipped in chrome. I will get before/after pics and post them here. I am so sold on this stuff that some of my co-workers have nicknamed me "Flitz". Get you free sample today!