Bakelite care and cleaning?

atticville

atticville

Alumni
Howdy everyone! I've just sold 24 Bakelite bangles to a fabulous customer and have been looking in all my resource books for cleaning care for Bakelite... to no avail.
Any suggestions for safe cleaning chemicals for Bakelite? Of course I will tell her no hairspray/perfume and so on... Any more suggestions?
Thank you!
 
KK -

You can clean and polish Bakelite with two different Novus products. Here's a link to order them:

http://www.bsueboutiques.com/shop/index.php?keywords=novus

I don't know if there are any "tips" about caring for it except that it can crack so try not to drop it! I store mine in lucite cubes so I can find it. One of my jewelry colleagues sells bangle caddies made of lucite for bangles. Bakelite changes color with exposure to air and light and some vintage pieces that I have purchased fairly recently have changed color since I've had them. I don't know if storing them out of the light would make a difference.

Linn
 
I had a feeling that metal polish would work OK however I did not want to say anything until I had a change to check that out any how i found this page
towards the end it says to clean Metal polish is OK, I would also add use small items use a cotton wool bud to put it on and off with ( Q tips ?)

http://bakelite_world_2001.tripod.com/itsbakeliteyouknow/id16.html

if it's has any big marks on it / scratches then may be it would be worth taking to a good jeweler who would be able to polish them out with jewelers rouge.

ewelers rouge is avaiable retail for a few $ but is a very very messy process (it's a metal polish in block form to be used on a machine, can be used by hand and loads of elbow greese.
 
Joules - that's a great idea!

Paul - I read online that you could use Brasso, but I was sceptical about that. Perhaps its ok, but I would experiment on an inconspciuous corner first I reckon!

Sarah
 
The only metal cleaner I have ever heard about being used with Bakelite is Simichrome Polish which can be used to test it and to polish it. I would be very wary about using something like Brasso and would definitely test in an inconspicuous place.

It's important to make sure when you get information online that the source is really knowledgable.

Linn
 
I think it's right to be cautious with Brasso it can effect certain plastics and is a little abrasive also, for lucite (perspect) it's great, apart from brass lol
 
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