Safe, Non-Toxic Hardware Cleaner

I thought I would share this with my family and friends. As most of you know, one of Christopher's hobbies is restoring and refinishing old furniture. As part of restoring furniture, he cleans the original hardware to bring it back to life (and save the expense of replacing it).

He has been working on an old chest that was his grandfathers and wanted to clean the hardware. I saw the stuff sitting on the counter and asked him what it was. I was thinking it was soaking in some nasty chemicals and stuff and was a little pissy at him thinking he left this chemical solution in our kitchen!

Lo and behold the solution was not some toxic chemical, but was made from everyday household products. Isn't he nifty! And the solution mix works really well (see above). All he mixes together are:
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp vinegar
2 cups of HOT water

Then he lets the pieces soak for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours in the mixture and then lightly scrubs them with some fine steel wool. That easy folks!