Cleaning up my Polk Audio logos

nspindel

Over the past few days I've done the last few mods left to my 4.1TL's - fabricated my Cardas wiring harnesses, mounted the binding posts and speakons to Trey's binding post plate, and replaced the grill cloth and the polyfill. The very last step is to put the Polk logos back on the speakers. But I noticed that one of them is very discolored. These logos are made from some sort of metal, finished black on the edges and a bronze/gold color on the face of the letters. One of the logos looks great, but the the other one seems to be turning a greenish color, perhaps some sort of tarnish. Any suggestions for how to clean this and restore it back to the gold color? I'm worried about using a product that would remove the original finish:

The clean one:

The tarnished one:

You can see the greenish color on the 'p' and 'audio'. Somehow 'olk' evaded the tarnish.

Any ideas?

PolkieMan

Try some toothpaste and soft old toothbrush

F1nut

I would try warm soapy water first, but I don't think anything is going to help. For whatever reason it appears the gold paint has reached the end of its life.

EndersShadow

Since just about everything else is new on these CRS's, why not just touchup the gold yourself with modeling paint? At this point your doing a full on restoration, so why not. Otherwise perhaps start looking to source another set of badges.

nspindel

Thanks for the advice, I will give it a shot with a toothbrush and some soap and toothpaste and see if I get anywhere. Otherwise, I had considered repainting, I will do that if nothing else works.

leftwinger57

Here's a pix of 1 of my 2B logos. If you can see it's pretty gold and both are the same and untouched by me. If the toothpaste and mild brushing doesn't do it and while your using water I would take a hair dryer and make damn sure those suckers are totally dry or else the tarnish will start again. If that fails I would use some antique gold paint from a hobby store. more than likely it's a tarnish issue I can't see anyone rubbing there logos to look road worn.

http://s42.photobucket.com/user/leftwinger57leftwinger/media/DSCN03401_zps65de1018.jpg.html

PolkieMan

Of course you could go all out all get a plating kit off amazon in gold or silver.

http://www.amazon.com/Plug-Plate%C2%AE-Nickel-Electroplating-Kit/dp/B009XELF08/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390977269&sr=8-3&keywords=plating+kit

I was also going to add maybe a little Brasso might help but be careful with that

leftwinger57

I thought of the ultimate logo restore job. Gold Leafing. You probably wouldn't need that may sheets and w/ all the nooks and crannys it more than likely would take real good. Now go find some and somone who knows how to do correctly.
No affliation ,there are lots of places to get the stuff,I was amazed.

http://www.joann.com/gold-leafing-sheets-25-pkg-gold/1100106.html

westmassguy

I just did a pair of SDA-2s which had the brushed aluminum badges. I used 220 grit Emory Cloth on a block, and they came out beautiful. I then washed, dried and gave them 2 or three coats of clear lacquer. You could do the same, or paint them by hand with gold leaf paint. You could also remove all the paint, put a brushed finish on them, and send them out to be gold anodized.

nspindel

I think I am going to just do some gold paint by hand. Don't need to get too elaborate here, I think a bit of paint will look fine. Thanks for the help all!

Mr. Bubbles

Clean it up real good. Spray the whole thing black, then take a piece of a thin old t shirt, soak it lightly in gold paint, very lightly press the face of the emblem to the gold in the cloth and lift back up. let dry. Enjoy. Some papers will work well like the cloth. Just use something that does not let the paint stand too thick on its surface.

j1mmy

I've had good results with the toothbrush and tooth paste. Mr. Bubbles' idea for the gold sounds spot on as well.

nspindel

Waking this thread up. Well, they're not perfect, but they are a lot better than they were. This is about as good a paint job as I'm capable of doing myself. Good old Testors model paint. It's been a LOT of years since I touched this stuff!

nspindel

Going to let them dry fully. I'll install them on the 4.1TL's tonight.

George Grand

Model airplane days again. Testor's gold was a ****. It never covered ANYTHING in one coat. You did a good job on those.

tophatjohnny

nice, but defiantly see the difference from the originals!

nspindel

I lied. Waiting is for wimps. They look great actually. Close up pictures tend to accentuate the flaws. If you look at them closely you can tell they've been painted, but from the sweet spot they look pretty damn good!