A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

Just bought a camera made around 1915, and, of course, like cars and motorcycles of the day, it is all nickel metal parts, before emergence of chrome.

Looking for cleaner suggestions, as some of you may have worked on older instruments with nickel parts.

Call a local motorcycle shop & ask them.
They usually have a good stock of metal cleaners/polishes & know from experience what works.

In addition to [mention]mickey[/mention] 's suggestion, you may want to see if you can find out if the parts are nickel or nickel-plated and if plated, how thick the plating is. You might want to deal with the patina vs. polishing off the plating.

Would never-dull work?

Well, I found some info on Gretsch and LesPaul forums actually, from Nevr-Dull, to something called "Flitz".


My nickel parts were made in 1915, so I assume is plenty thick plating.
I only seek to clean up a bit, so that it is functional and pleasant-looking, not deep polish stuff.

1900's motorcycles and cars all had nickel throughout, quite beautiful actually, so I need to find the people with stuff of that era.

Flitz is made down the road from me, it's more of a polish than a cleaner. I would try Never dull, we used that stuff to clean/polish every damn thing when I was active in the Marine Corps. The smell of Never dull is burned into my senses....in a bad way. Make sure you keep anything with a copper solvent ie: Hoppes #9 away from nickel since copper is the base metal in nickel.

Most fine metal polish is the same basic ingredient. A little Naphtha to clean the dirt and lubricate and some ultra fine abrasive compound.

Simichrome


https://www.simichrome-polish.com/

I collect pocketknives and Flitz Metal Polish is widely accepted as the best for cleaning and polishing. It works great for nickel bolsters as well as both stainless and carbon steel blades. You can buy on Amazon less than $10

BTW, for the curious, here is what the camera looks like (not mine same thing):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com ... f=1&nofb=1

And the cleaning needed is minimal. The dusty-looking ebay pics were misleading.

And it is all there, shutter is hit-or miss, no major pinholes in bellows, and I have to learn how the engage the focus rail properly. Leather-covered mahogany body!

stacks wrote: ↑Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:51 pm Simichrome


https://www.simichrome-polish.com/

They didn't mention nickel...
Simichrome is perfect for chrome, silver, brass, gold, copper, pewter, aluminum, magnesium, stainless steel, even Plexiglas.

OMB wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:33 pm

stacks wrote: ↑Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:51 pm Simichrome


https://www.simichrome-polish.com/

They didn't mention nickel...
Simichrome is perfect for chrome, silver, brass, gold, copper, pewter, aluminum, magnesium, stainless steel, even Plexiglas.

FWIW, I've used it on nickel pickup covers and hardware, worked well and and no problems...

tobijohn wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 9:11 pm

OMB wrote: ↑Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:33 pm

stacks wrote: ↑Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:51 pm Simichrome


https://www.simichrome-polish.com/

They didn't mention nickel...
Simichrome is perfect for chrome, silver, brass, gold, copper, pewter, aluminum, magnesium, stainless steel, even Plexiglas.

FWIW, I've used it on nickel pickup covers and hardware, worked well and and no problems...

I have also used it on nickel with excellent results.

I've never tried simichrome which looks promising but I have used never dull with great results.

[mention]redman[/mention] offered to help me with Flitz!

Upon research on my photo forums, some folks have even used it on hazy lenses, using very, very small amounts!