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Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

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  for Metal Finishing 1989-2024
  

How Do I Refinish Brass

I am working on a project dealing with some brass lacquered lids that must be cleaned and prepared to receive a matte black paint finish and a clear protective coating. (Not my idea :-)) Need help as to the following: How do I remove the lacquer. 1) How do I treat the brass that is to be painted? 2) How do I prepare the brass surface for painting? 3) What type of paint should I use. 4) What kind of clear protective finish should be used? Your help will be greatly appreciated.

You may want to search the site for 'refinish brass', Grace, because variations of this question have been asked and answered dozens of times already; so the responders are probably fatigued and will be slow to respond yet again :-)

Lacquer is removable with lacquer thinner ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] Warning! highly flammable! but it is possible, depending on the age of these "lids" that they are not actually brass. So step 1 is to take off the lacquer--and the result can go three ways: it worked, the clear coating didn't come off because it is not actually lacquer; it came off and you no longer have a brass color because it was actually lacquer with a brass-tone tint over nickel plating. Good luck.

adv.

"Clearcoats/Lacquers for Brass from G.J. Nikolas"