Gold finish outside handles pitting.

Had a similar problem in my last property - brass, or perhaps just brass-finished exterior door handles corroding in the salt air. I cleaned and polished them, then varnished them. Eventually the varnish needed re-doing where it wore off due to regular handling, but it was OK for several years.

If you buy from door to door salespeople I have some snake oil that you can purchase.

alan_m laid this down on his screen :

Thanks, but no I don't buy from them - I found it in a cupboard, where it had probably been for decades.

spray or paint on cellulose lacquer

Are there any left apart from Nottingham Knocker chancers?

Kleeneze in the pre Internet ,pre eBay age sometimes had something useful if you lived out in the sticks and couldn?t get to the shops but became very uncompetitive once perusing and buying online arrived. We occasionally bought something from the Kleeneze woman who used to call, more out of sympathy than need but now they have gone bust we don?t need to do that any more. The other that used to call wayback was Betterware ,the name now seems to belong to a very basic website with similar offering to a pound shop.

Still the Coopers of Stortford catalogue dropped in this morning in case we have a sudden desire for a special brush to clean an elephants trunk and another for its bum.

GH

What is the finish exactly though? Hard to advise otherwise. Brian

Actually, these particular things are more of a wax polish than anything else. I'm sure you could make your own if you wanted. If it is brass, say lacquered then you need to revarnish I'd imagine or the holes will first go that horrible brown green colour as they oxidise. Brian

Duraglit? Those metal polosh impregnated bits of cotton wool. Brian