I'm a new member who's trying some light restoration of a Bennett 646 (to convert it to a an electric car charger).

One thing I wanted to do was restore the sight glass "must be full" tag to readability. Looking around online, I found places that suggested it was polished aluminum, so that seemed easy enough. I decided to use some steel wool with the intent of polishing it up then repainting the black background.

But I quickly found that the polishing was removing the silver aluminum color -- in fact, it looks like brass underneath. Here's a picture; the "A" in "GLASS" is obviously where I started doing this.

Any suggestions about the silver color? Was the original made of brass that was aluminum coated and now easily flakes off, or something like that? I guess I don't care too much if it's brass colored on a black background when I'm done, but I'm curious, and all things being equal I would like to keep it looking as it originally did. Thanks!

These are available in reproduction from vendors listed on our "Parts" page.

https://www.vics66.com/store/gas-pu...0-700-1941-1951/m.products/275/view/6134

Thanks! Yep, I was considering just buying reproductions, but if possible I'd like to restore the existing one. If anyone has tips, or knows why the original appearance was shiny silver when it appears to be brass underneath, I'd much appreciate any pointers!

Sounds like it is chrome plated & you have polished thru the chrome into the copper underneath

Yeah, I think you're right. Further examination by scraping it with a dental tool suggests that most of the chrome plating is already gone, under the black areas. So I guess I'll polish it back to brass and then see if I want to get it plated. Thanks!

Just wanted to add a followup to this in case anyone else finds themself in a similar situation. It turned out that much of the plating was already rubbed off, so I gently polished it down to the original brass, then repainted the background in black. It looks pretty good.

Re-plating it, or perhaps just painting the gold letters with silver chrome-like paint, would perhaps be a little more authentic, but I'm happy with this.

That looks pretty darn good! I'm at the same point on couple 766's. Curious how you were able to "paint" the black lettering?