Okay, I'll chime in on this one...

I agree with a number of the folks here, especially about the difference between cleaning and restoring.

If all you're doing is cleaning the kit / drum, then clean the badge as well. If you're going to restore the kit / drum, and the wrap or finish is restorable, then restore the badge as well.

I've got a 40's Slingy GK RK WMP snare that the wrap was toast on. I rewrapped it and polished out the brass cloud badge. I polished everything else as well. I restored the thing. And yes, in my world there is a restoration definition for a rewrap as long as the original wrap is beyond saving.

My two cents...

i dont have a problem with cleaning or polishing a badge. but i have seen some ludwig badges that were polished to a shine that looked nothing like the pics of badges in the catalogs of when the drums were new. i think this may be what mlvibes was talking about.

mike

Excellent points about cleaning/detail vs restoration too. I would be more of a cleaning and detail person I guess. I repair any ply or ring seperation, extra holes, polish hardware, paint wood hoops etc.... I think a restoration would include replating parts as original when new. I won't be going to that length with my stuff as it can be a very costly process. I just like it to look nice as possible as is. James I hope to see your badge "after" pic soon too. I'm curious how it came out.

Well I carefully masked off the badge area yesterday. Thought about it overnight and shiney penny won. Seeing how the cloud badges are really a focal point for me I caved and polished it. The layers of tarnish that came off.....wow! It looks better than new. Hard to get a clear pic of it but it'll age gracefully again for the next guy in another 70 years that has them. He can waffle and decide then LOL. It was interesting as I was cleaning it, I looked carefully with a mag glass for any traces of finish. If there ever was it was pretty much gone to the corrosion and tarnish. Here's the pic...........

Another pic hopefully little better............. A bit cleaner than I wanted but it'll tarnish and age again. I was trying to get a happy medium but parts were cleaner than others. Meh.

A toothbrush gets in that gromet area pretty good !!

FFR428 - Great job with the badge! So shiny...real classy.

Sorry it took so long to post the pic of mine, but here you go. My aluminum badge is not anywhere near as shiny as yours; there are a few spots that I cant seem to buff out. No big deal. As a side note, and hopefully I wont take too much of a lashing for this, but I decided to try to re-enamel the lettering on my badge. Still have a ways to go before the letters are done. If it comes out looking ugly, I can remove the enamel easily, so no additional harm done. For better or worse, here she is. One before pic and two after.

Wow that just killed my day. When I was cleaning my snare I went ahead and polished the badge :eek: ...didn't even think about the damage I might have been doing. That just blows

Yes, I have to say...I am a badge cleaner, and have at times polished the badges on my kit. I have found however, that the brass/copper used in the WFL badges is on the soft side and too aggressive use of agents like Brasso or Noxon will wear away the raised lettering. Found it best not to rub, only lightly wipe.

[IMG]http://i650.photobucket.com/albums/uu224/FTG3/P2030147.jpg[/IMG]

OddBall thanks for the toothbrush tip. Yes indeed I still need to work more on the gromet area. I didn't want to be too agressive until I saw exactly what I was dealing with. To be honest it's a bit more shine than I wanted.

James your badge looks great! There's a few spots on mine that didn't buff out that well either. That's a cool idea redoing the enamel lettering. Very nice!

Batterhead nice badge as well!! I used Weiman polish. It's not very agressive and took a good hour and a half slowly working on it. I use Noxon at work and it has a lot of ammonia in it. Stinky stuff.