Here they are, all shiny and new!
Now let’s see what happens after we soak them in vinegar, hot sauce, salt, mustard, and a secret ingredient, then hold them over an open flame so they get nice and warm and sooty, then scrub them down vigorously with steel wool, and repeat!
(Right click → view image for high res)
Oh dear!
very nice!
why soak them? i just held them in a flame and mine turned out the same from what I can see. Did it make any noticeable difference when you washed them off before you flamed them?
The reason I soaked them was that I was unable to remove the plastic tube from one of the nycoil banjos, and I was afraid I’d melt it if I simply heated them. However, nothing I tried did anything of any sort to the brass that I could tell. And only the secret ingredient did anything to the nickel. (That blackened and dulled it quite quickly actually. But the heat did the same job just as well.)
So, in the end, I ended up holding them in a pair of tongs, and carefully heated them with one of those long necked lighters you use for grills and stoves. The heat browned the brass, and by holding it just out of the flame, they were blackened with soot.
All that other stuff I tried because I’d read they do stuff to copper and bronze. And maybe they would do something to brass if I let them sit long enough. But I didn’t want my brass to turn green or something. So heat was the safest bet, having used that before on a brass hose nozzle I used for my leg hose connector.
