I now have many fuse boxes to experiment with.
I had one that had some rust stains on the interior from the fuse clips.
So I used that one and my original broken tab version for this experiment.
First stop is into the sink to remove all of the old grunge using Dawn and a toothbrush.
Here is what I used to clean the rust and polish the outside:
That nets this:
On the inside of the fuse area I used a small wooden stick to polish that area and remove rust:
A toothbrush removed the left over polish.
On to paint. I found some acrylic paint in the wife's studio along with a very small brush. I also found a patch of some linen. I wanted linen as it has almost no fuzzies on it. You need cloth that will not go into recessed paint area. Paper towels are also out.
Apply enough paint to go into the recessed area. That may take some daubing. No air bubbles should be present in the lettering areas:
I only let the paint sit 30 seconds or so before I applied a slightly wetter than damp linen to the top surface. It took a few passes and I ended up with this:
It looks really sharp and takes only a few minutes.