I've used this stuff forever to shine my uniform brass and medals and such, and my wife uses it to shine silver and brass. I tried some on my canoe, and it works wonders, but it's kind of a pain just because of the size of the canoe. Does anyone know what chemical the wadding is impregnated with, and if it's readily available?

I read the MSDS at the website http://www.nevrdull.com/ ,but it didn't yield any clues.

win

and cotton!

Undoubtedly, but I don't think that's the chemical name for it.

That stuff works great on railing on a boat on salt water.

Same stuff that magnets are made of.

It'd probably something close to the old Brasso, it sure smells the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasso

Smells darn close  and works on a lot of the same materials, and sold as a liquid as well. It may be slightly more abrasive than nevr dull, but it might be what you're looking for vs the stuff with the wadding.

Same here.

brings back nightmares of shining that bell and 12 belaying pins every day for 4 years.

If you want to polish a canoe, I think you should look into what the aircraft polishers use (and the milk tank truck shiners)

In fact, I bought several different buffing compounds in 2 lb bars at a truckstop (cheap, like $4 ea.)

One for stainless, another for aluminum, another for final polish of aluminum, something like that.

Anyway, bulk polishing compounds and a well-wielded power buffer with a separate bonnet for each compound is probably the way to go.

It's a proprietary formula, but it could be cracked, I'm sure.  My first job as an analytical chemist was reverse-engineering the surfactant and textile chemical formulations of our competitors.



It looks like it's similar to Brasso. Brasso is basically white spirits, kaolin clay, and ammonia hydroxide.  The ammonia works as a strong reducer to counteract the oxidation on the brass.  The kaolin clay is a very mild abrasive and the white spirits works like a wetting agent to keep everything mixed.



So, as a guess, I'd think that Nevr-Dull is similar, but they're using a higher boiling solvent.  From poking around I think it's 1-heptanol.  The MSDS has a boiling point of 343-degrees, and specific gravity of 0.805, and that it's soluble in water.  They mixed in some mineral spirits, which will throw off the boiling point and specific gravity a bit, but 1-heptanol boils at 348-degrees and has a specific gravity of 0.818.  Close, but not exactly the same.  And it's not very soluble in water.



I suspect they put in a reducing agent, probably ammonium hydroxide or something similar.  And use cotton wadding instead of kaolin clay for abrasiveness.



There are contract labs you could send the fluid portion to that would tell you what's in there for not a lot of money.  To reverse-engineer the formula, as in how much of what ingredient, is a bit more involved and much more expensive.  But for the cost of doing the analysis you could probably buy yourself a lifetime supply of Nevr-Dull.

I think the tears of non rates is infused in there somewhere.

I think the tears of non rates is infused in there somewhere.

PFM infused cotton.