Saw this on a programme about Victorian farm life. They used to polish metal (copper, brass etc) with brick dust and vinagar. You simply rub 2 bricks together to get a fine abrasive powder, and mix it with vinagar then dab a rag in the mixture and polish away.

How many Victorian bicycles are still around? I think that I'll stick with stuff that maybe has better quality control standards than brick manufacturing does. But if I ever have to polish my stem while I'm on a construction/demolition site, I'll keep it in mind.

Good tip for cycling through Amish country.

meh

Steel wool, anyone?

The bricks keep wearing holes in my pockets.

Are these Campy or Shimano bricks? What happens if you use Shimano bricks and Campy vinegar?

Mixes as well as soy sauce and olive oil.

My surprise for polishing chrome and aluminum has been Astonish polishing cream, still have the Simichrome but the Astonish stuff is faster, easier and much less expensive, and smells less.

Come on! Give the dude a break. When I was a kid my dads Buick's rear bumper rusted up in the Indiana winter salt. He gives me a can of chrome polish and tells me to make it shiney again. Let me tell you....this rust was determined to not come off. I butter fingered the rag ;and dropped it in the fine gravel of the driveway and all of a sudden the rust started disappear. Wha La! All I needed was something more abrasive. A lesson I never forgot.

Fathers the world over just felt an increase in blood pressure.

When I was a kid, my dad gave my brothers and I some bricks and told us to scrape out the iron bottom plate of an old oil furnace with them, to remove the rust, etc. We thought he was nuts, but arguing with him never went over very well, and of course it worked like a charm. Then we washed it out and used it for a campfire griddle. You could do about 20 pancakes at once on it. The brick thing worked very well.

When I was a kid, my dad made me eat bricks and wash it down with mineral spirits. I then proceeded to spit-shine his collection of metal spoons.

EDIT: Honestly, I just don't have a good my-dad-made-me story to keep with the theme.

Well, what a crabby bunch. Here was me thinking the people on this board were adaptive, self-sufficient, and most of all, friendly. I'll keep it to myself next time. I'm off back to the touring forum where folks tend to be a little less snearing and snooty. Seeya

Don't go away mad. Fact is, people here are truly serious about restoring/keeping vintage stuff without damaging it. While my "riposte" above was delivered with a dose of sarcasm, I admit, the technical point was serious. The examples given above by others are for stuff way more indestructible than beautiful bike parts. I am equally leery of steel wool, if that's any consolation.

No steel wool?
What do you use?

<Soapbox warning>

I don't like the fact that regular steel wool leaves particles that rust (I fully realize that others don't see this as a problem); so if metal wool is indicated, then brass, or bronze. Most people don't realize that chrome plating has a deposit of chrome (the hardest stuff) that's only a few microns thick. When you've taken that away with abrasive, it's gone and it ain't coming back -- you're down to nickel then, much softer and can't compare to chromium for corrosion resistance. I prefer to keep things clean and corrosion-free in the first place, and I think that rust removal using chemical means such as oxalic acid is much better than using an abrasive. The less work the abrasive is, the more damage you've done to the chromium.

I can't tell you the number of times that I've seen architectural stainless steel wrecked because someone has used tools on it that they previously used on carbon steel. Stainless develops a chromium oxide coating passively, which is very thin, but when it's broken, and iron particles are ground in, it will never re-passivate, unless the entire finishing process is redone (and that's generally impossible outside a fabrication facility).

For polishing aluminum, virtually nothing will touch anodizing, or make it much better looking. And when dealing with non-anodized aluminum, using the finest abrasive possible is the best approach. The shinier and more reflective the finish (meaning that it isn't full of scratches), the more corrosion-resistant it will be.

Sorry - long day. Thanks for explaining.

All the best

Phil