| Well... you generally don't bother cleaning them. In today's Navy, officers rarely wear summer whites or choker whites -- the uniforms that require the hard shoulder boards. We're in khakis all the time. The hard shoulder boards are worn a few times a year for most people.
Which means that they don't get that dirty, and by the time they do get dirty, you're probably about to be promoted, at which point you need a nice, new, shiny pair of shoulder boards with one more stripe.
For what it's worth, the older shoulder boards I have don't look dirty so much as "tarnished" -- or somehow oxidized, or maybe just worn off. I'm not sure it's just cleanable dirt anyway.
Good luck with your antiques, though.
Yours,
MF |