Simichrome metal polish will have it shiny as a hiney !!

The advantage of using Bras-so on or any metal cleaning chemical it removes years of tarnish specially on brass allowing lettering to stand out. Now depending on the type of badge you have if it's brass Bras so will not hurt it, Now if its aluminum then you have to use none abrasive Chemicals and that is because on the aluminum badges 99% Of them are badges that are painted and so not to remove the paint you need to use a none abrasive such as Windex or a chrome cleaner. I have done numerous badges and in cleaning I have used a harsher chemical which is paste rough and the badges come out like New specially those that have raised lettering. Here you have examples of badges I have done in the past. Now keep in mind I did these over 6 year ago and still look very good

Thanks for the info. Those badges you did look great.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I tried the chrome polish and the badge turned out pretty good. If it hadn't been so badly bent out of shape it probably would look mint. Check out the picture. I got it flattened back out but as you can see there is still some wrinkles around the grommet hole and the one side is scuffed. Hopefully I'll get something for it on ebay. Maybe I will leave it siting out for a couple of weeks and see if tarnishes a bit.

You can now wash the badge in some hot water with soap or detergent like dawn to remove the polish. Then the badge will begin to tarnish some like a more natural patina.

Mike

All those dents and creases you can remove them but it take time to do and lots of patients. You also can repaint the tan color that Ludwig used on their badges. It just takes time in spray painting, then shaving out the raised lettering and then baking the badge so that paint sticks to metal. If you do all this work it will look like it just came out the Ludwig Factory.

I will do that.

There were more dents than that. After I rolled it flat I put it on a hard surface and lightly taped it with a hammer which removed a lot of the creases. Unfortunately I put the scuff on the one side cause I did protect the face side.

I found the pic of the badge before I flattened it. It wasn't as tarnished as I thought. But look how badly bent it was, then look at what is left of the grommet. Who ever removed this badge from it's drum then removed the grommet from the badge took no care in doing so. They bent the hell out of the badge to get the grommet out. The grommet looks like an artifact from the Titanic.

I've had decent lunch straightening badges by putting them between 2 wash clothes and then rolling them with baking rolling pin. It also gives it a slight curve to fit the shell.