I've had a couple of old "Clan War" Oni Demons (Oni no Kamu) sitting around for years…
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That's the Oni no Kamu in the middle there. I plan to use them as extra Titan Slaves for Wargods of Olympus, to beef up my limited number of slave units. Nice figures, long out of print, but almost exactly the same size as the titan slaves.
Unfortunately, the two Oni no Kamu that I've got were tarnished badly, they looked almost like they'd been given a brown ink wash… and I was reluctant to prime them, as I've heard that priming over tarnish can eventually lead to "lead rot" and bubbling and such under the paint. I plan to have my collection for the rest of my life, and I don't want them slowly deteriorating over a period of years.
So I went to the local store and bought a bottle of "Brasso Brass polish and cleaner".
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I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to use the stuff, so I took a couple of paper towels, soaked them in the stuff, and then folded the Oni in the towels, set them in a ceramic plate, and then set the plate outside for an hour or so.
(I live in an apartment, and Brasso has a STRONG and nasty chemical smell. I also wore rubber gloves, as the bottle is covered in all sorts of scary warnings.)
After about an hour, I brought them inside (throwing the greasy paper towel away in the outside trash bin), and took them to the bathroom sink where I gently scrubbed the figures with an old toothbrush that I keep on hand specifically for cleaning miniatures. I rinsed the figures with water afterwards, and wiped them off carefully with some more paper towels.
It worked very well. There's still a tiny bit of tarnish in the deepest recesses of the figures, but not so much that I'm worried about it anymore.
So, if you've got old minis that need some tarnish removed from them, I'd highly reccomend "Brasso", with the caveat that you definitely should let them soak outside (or in a garage or wherever), and throw all the paper towels away immediately, and do careful cleanup afterwards – the chemical smell is strong and nasty.
Finals are tomorrow, and I plan to be a total bum next week (before I look more seriously for a summer job, since I haven't heard back from Raytheon about the Iraq job yet). I might even paint some miniatures, if so, a couple of units of Titan Slaves including these guys are high on the list.
-Alex in Alaska
