Yesterday my sister was given a very large set of brass flatware. I don’t know how many pieces are in it, but it seemed like hundreds and hundreds! She asked me how to polish them, as they seemed tarnished. I looked at them, and to be honest they didn’t look like brass to me – they looked like stainless steel flatware! But the lighting in the room was poor, so what do I know? Well, I’ve never polished brass before, and the thought of hand polishing all of that seemed like a daunting task! So I tried to find out some information on the Internet about it and found one recipe for ammonia and water that you could soak it in. That seemed like the easiest way out to me. The catch is, however, to first determine if it is solid brass or plated. Apparently if you put a magnet to it and it falls off, then it is solid brass. If the magnet stays on it, then it is plated. That made me wonder why some metal will let a magnet stick, while other’s don’t! I guess I should have paid more attention in one of my science classes! Maybe chemistry class? Probably – that was the one I had the hardest time with!