How to Polish Brass Instruments

Video Transcript

" Hello! My name is Dwayne Carter and on behalf of expertvillage.com we are talking about cleaning brass instruments. I have cleaned this trumpet and now I am going to clean the exterior of it. I am going to use a lacquer cloth to wipe off any excess oils, grease and any oils that come from your hand as well. So I just wipe it down, making sure that I get all the little crevices in between and definitely around the bell area. That is all it is to cleaning a lacquer instrument. On a silver instrument such as this fluegelhorn, it takes a little more rubbing because you have an instrument that can tarnish because of the ions in the air that would cause oxidation. As you can see on this valve trombone, which has been sitting out and it has tarnished just like any silver tea set would but as you can see I have did a little rubbing here with my heavy duty silver polishing cloth and it too will shine very brilliantly once you have rubbed it quite a while. So the thing to remember is to get all of the oils off and to shine it to a nice buff shine."