Maybe this belongs in The Thread Of Awesome, but here goes. My heartfelt thanks go out to Outlaw for declining my offer of the brass spray nozzle I bought at an estate auction today. In my message I mentioned that if he didnt' want it, it wouldn't hurt my feelings because I have a friend named Allen who is into gardening and would probably like it.
Outlaw declined and gently suggested it should be polished first.
Perish the thought! That's manual labor!! ...but then, just for laughs I did a quick net search for brass polishing and came up with a video showing dull brass regaining most of its polish in a matter of seconds in a bath of salt and vinegar. NFW sez I ... but, gee, I got both of those right here...
Well it took more like two minutes and vigorous shaking in tupperware, but danged if it didn't work! The second picture shows the result after a rinse and dry. WOW!
But, of course I couldn't let well enough alone ... I dimly recalled I had some stuff called Brasso that was made for such things. Dang it, I found it easily, so I had to try it. Well, this stuff takes some rubbing and buffing, but really not much. Maybe 5 minutes worth with a chunk of an old flannel sheet and it turned into what you see in pix 3. I gave it a quick rinse and blow dry (laugh if you will, but it's pretty darn nice having a cheap, small HF compressor sitting in the basement), then a coat of Johnson's paste wax to preserve all my arduous toils.
I'll send it off to Allen in plenty of time for spring planting - and THANKS AGAIN, OUTLAW!