--- Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 28 Nov 2006 at 12:35, Chris M wrote:
ok, enough of you dudes seem to be familiar with
the
stuff, how does it compare with Brasso?
One of my hobbies is repairing and rebuilding brass
musical wind
instruments (trumpets, horns, tubas, etc.)--and the
mention of Brasso
causes me to cringe. Basically it's an abrasive in
a mixture of
stoddard solvent and ammonia. The problem is that
the abrasive is
far to aggressive. Sometimes I'll get old horns
that have had the
engraving almost obliterated by overuse of Brasso.
Consider that the gold plating on an edge connector
is only a few
microns thick and that gold is much softer than
brass.
On old PCBs, I've had pretty good success with just
a toothbrush and
a mild detergent in warm water. Follow up with a
deionized water
rinse followed by ethyl alcohol as a drier. In
severe cases, a
buffing compound, such as rouge, applied with a
cotton buff on a
Dremel should clean things right up.
OT - would the effect of Brasso differ much from
"jeweler's rouge", which I'm told is essentially rust
and a lite oil? I've never actually seen it, not sure
if it came as a solid or liquid (or is even still
available). Sears sells these sticks nowadays, one of
them being basically rust colored, so I guess that's
basically it in solid form.
Uhhh, no, not really. It is ferrous (ferric?) oxide, but it is to
rust what a cut diamond is to diamod-based industrial abrasive.
Jeweler's rouge is the final buff of high-finish jewelry. It takes a
lot of buffing to remove a noticeable amount of metal with it, even
using a bench buffer. What you can do with Brasso in minutes would take
weeks with rouge, using the same type of applicator.
Doc