Re-vitalizing tarnished bullion?

[Sabrejet]

I have several WW2 period uniforms in my collection....USAAF dress blues, USN Lt's blue and khaki service dress...which are in great shape, almost "minty"! However, they are all let down by their heavily tarnished bullion shoulder boards which, though original to the uniforms, look somehow out of place in comparison to them...know what I mean? This is particularly so in regard to the dress blues which is in otherwise immaculate overall condition.

 

So, I wondered if anyone out there has a fail-safe method of revitalising such tarnished bullion? Ordinarliy, I tend to leave things as they are, for example, I would never polish up my WW2 wing badges, but in this instance I think the uniforms would look so much better with brighter bullion!

 

The most delicate are the dress blues' shoulder boards which are of the curved "fore and aft" variety which snap into place. The heavy bullion-wire border surrounds a velvet ground at the centre of which are bullion majors' oak leaves, so any application of a commercial cleaner is probably a no-no.

 

The naval shoulder boards are, I think, black worsted with bullion stars and bars. Any advice or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks for your time.

[Bob Hudson]

We've had a lot of discussion about this on the forum and there does not seem to be any way to do that. Pencil erasers have been used to shine up bullion - for a short time - but it seems that the pencil eraser residue actually make the tarnish even worse in the long run.

 

One of the things on my to-do list is to try some experiments to see if there's something that might actually work: there may be some labor-intensive process not yet tried or some process that could make the bullion look better for display purposes but not good for, say, wear as a military uniform. I suspect that much of what has been tried was for the purposes of making a uniform suitable for wear and in those instances it has to look pretty near perfect and cannot require so much time that it would be cheaper to just have a tailor replace the bullion.

[Sabrejet]

We've had a lot of discussion about this on the forum and there does not seem to be any way to do that. Pencil erasers have been used to shine up bullion - for a short time - but it seems that the pencil eraser residue actually make the tarnish even worse in the long run.

 

One of the things on my to-do list is to try some experiments to see if there's something that might actually work: there may be some labor-intensive process not yet tried or some process that could make the bullion look better for display purposes but not good for, say, wear as a military uniform. I suspect that much of what has been tried was for the purposes of making a uniform suitable for wear and in those instances it has to look pretty near perfect and cannot require so much time that it would be cheaper to just have a tailor replace the bullion.

 

 

 

Roger that..and thanks for the super-fast response!

 

Sabrejet :thumbsup: