{"id":18360,"date":"2016-01-10T21:48:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T02:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/?p=18360"},"modified":"2016-01-10T21:48:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T02:48:59","slug":"aluminum-polishing-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2016\/01\/10\/aluminum-polishing-disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"Aluminum Polishing Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_8833-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Bialetti Moka, having been corroded in the dishwasher. Right side was polished with water and potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar). It didn't make much of a difference.\" src=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/IMG_8833-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A while back I stupidly put my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bialetti.com\/www.bialetti.com\/coffee\/stovetop\/moka-express-c-1_7_22.html\">Bialetti Moka<\/a>\u00a0in the dishwasher. Due to the alkaline detergent it discolored and pitted, no longer looking bright and shiny. In an effort to\u00a0restore its look I\u00a0researched restoring aluminum cookware that&#8217;d been washed in a similar manner and found\u00a0that polishing with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Potassium_bitartrate\">potassium bitartate (cream of tartar)<\/a>\u00a0should work well.<\/p>\n<p>In the image above the left panel was the post-dishwasher state, and the right is after a few minutes of polishing with a mixture of equal parts water and potassium bitartate. While a bit of yellowing was removed the aluminum was not returned to its previous shiny state. The appearance change was actually minimal enough that I didn&#8217;t bother polishing the rest of the Moka.<\/p>\n<p>I imagine I could remove more of the\u00a0discoloration and pitting by using some proper metal polish and maybe a buffing wheel, but I&#8217;m not going to bother. While the Moka still works fine I was hoping for an easy return to the original shiny appearance. It looks like the recommendation of using cream of tartar didn&#8217;t do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I stupidly put my Bialetti Moka\u00a0in the dishwasher. Due to the alkaline detergent it discolored and pitted, no longer looking bright and shiny. In an effort to\u00a0restore its look I\u00a0researched restoring aluminum cookware that&#8217;d been washed in a similar manner and found\u00a0that polishing with potassium bitartate (cream of tartar)\u00a0should work well. In\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-house","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18361,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18360\/revisions\/18361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}