An Altar Guild Member's Guide to Brass Polishing

All of that brass needs polishing! Image credit: Ann Quay Rushing

Hello, my name is Ann Quay and I am the head of Altar Guild.  One of altar guild’s responsibilities is to care for the brass at St. John. I like to polish the brass for the Christmas season; this blog post will show how we make it shine.

Equipment

• Tube of Simichrome Polish or any other brass polishing past
• Toothbrush
• Clean cloth rags that you don’t mind throwing out.
• Newspaper or some other table protection. 
• The brass objects
• To remove wax we use Fusion Thumb scraper

​Please note:  Tarnish is the result of metal (in this case brass) chemically reacting to air.  To remove the tarnish, you are essentially removing a layer of the metal.  Do this enough, and you will remove the metal from the object, or wear away any inscriptions or decorations. That is why my philosophy when it comes to polishing is "Don’t aim for perfection."  We polish as little as is necessary to achieve a shine. This is especially important for anything the is plated.

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