Have you ever started searching a particular thing, I don’t know, like Arborite as an example, and after a significant amount of time has passed you come out of your daze and realize that you have been watching videos of cats and cucumbers or something stupid. There is no science that can explain the rabbit hole phenomena, it is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals and nevertheless, even though we are fully aware of the possibility of getting sucked into the vortex every time we open our computer, we still end up getting trapped.
Well occasionally the rabbit hole leads you to mysterious places that are actually useful as opposed to just silly. Case in point, I actually did start googling arborite and ended up watching homemade youtube videos on magic ways to clean brass. I spoke the following words out right. “Bullshit.” The Admiral knew full well where I had been for the last 2 hours, wow had it really bee n 2 hours? Anyway, I decided to try one of these homemade BS solutions to cleaning brass. I diligently went down into the dark recesses of the basement and found the worst piece of brass I have. The ships bell from Akupara. It is old, pitted, tarnished and generally in really poor condition. I of course hung on to it when we were gutting Akupara as it actually has a beautiful tone and I thought someday I might be able to clean it.
I proceeded into the kitchen, where all dirty jobs truly belong, I gathered all of the ingredients as per the instructions and laid it all out on the counter.
I mixed the ingredients as per the video into a white paste like consistency and painted it all over the bell.
I let it sit for about 10 minutes and then proceeded to wash it all off with a dishrag, give it a quick dry and put it back into the same position for the Results picture.
Wow, I was very surprised to say the least. This might actually be working. As you can see in the picture, there are still some bad spots so I thinks to meself, put another coat on it and see what happens. So that is exactly what I did. I was also so surprised by the initial test that I grabbed another ships bell and tried it on that as well.
And another batch of mush was mixed up and this time both were painted. I did not take a picture of both as they were undergoing the magic, but the results are below.
So why 2 bells you ask? Well, it is a long story but I will tell it to you. Many moons ag, the Admiral and the crew pitched together and purchased me the ships bell on the left in the picture. This ships bell has been on several of our boats now, it is not engraved so I don’t think I am breaking any major voodoo rules. When we sold Kismet, I mounted the bell outside of our front door. My uncle always had a big brass ships bell on the door to his house as well. I bet it is still hanging there. Anyway, the part of the story that I skipped is that there really is not a lot of room on small boats to have these types of luxuries so on Mara our Alberg 30, the ships bell was actually mounted in the head and so the tradition started that, the ships bell is rung every time there is a deposit made, if you get my drift. I know it’s gross, but hey, you have to laugh. So, coming back to Akupara, since we have 2 heads, it is only fitting that we have 2 ships bells. That way, all aboard will be notified regardless of which head is used.
The final pictures I am posting are totally misleading. I am not sure what I did to my camera, or if I changed the lighting conditions or what, but believe me when I tell you, the ships bell is not silver as it appears in the picture, it is still brass in colour.
After the final magic session of goop, and the picture above, I gave the bell about a 20 minute polish with a little bit of Brasso just to see if I could get the shine to come up. It came up a lot but of course would be a lot better if I had a mechanical polisher to do the job for me.
So, the magic formula is flour, salt and vinegar. I took 3 handfuls of flour, free poured the salt, and mixed in vinegar until I thought it was the right consistency to paint on.
The 2nd batch I mixed up, I think I could have used a bit more vinegar but it worked either way.
So, in the end, sometimes the rabbit hole can lead to good places, now, where was that cat video again?
For those of you out there who are going to tell me that I am ruining the finish, or changing the electro static variables of the molecular structure or….I don’t care, it’s shiny! 😉