Al Carrell: You know, brass is a very popular item around the house. We have it on mail boxes, hinges, all sorts of hardware. Some people even have brass monkeys in the front yard. And it's very easy for you to clean. However, a lot of people just go in there and try to clean it and nothing happens. And the reason is because brass is given a protective coating. You have to remove the protective coating or else you're just polishing the coating on top. So what you do there is use paint and varnish remover and that'll usually take it off.

This is our mailbox and it's already been stripped of the protective coating, which was lacquer. Now, we just polish it ever so often. And as I said, it's easy to polish brass. You can use a lot of different things. For example, would you believe that you can use ketchup on there? And all you need to do is put the ketchup on there and start rubbing and it does a pretty fair job. You can see where it's already taken the dullness off and if you just did this all over before long you'd have a shiny like-new mailbox.

I've got another home recipe that I think you're going to like. You take salt and flour and pour enough vinegar in there to make a paste out of it. And then you just dip your rag in there and you start rubbing around and it does real quick work on the brass tarnish. Look at that. Now once you get this thing all polished up, you probably don't want to have to do this again, even though it's a lot of fun. So what you want to do it take a little bit of olive oil and after you've got it all polished up and you've dried it real good, put the olive oil over there and that'll act as a protective coating. But just a little thin film of it. Don't get it too much too greasy or the postman might not be able to get it open.

I'm Super Handyman Al Carrell, About the House.