More on Cleaning Copper and Silver Jewelry August 25
I got an email asking for more info on cleaning copper jewelry and about silver tarnishing. The fellow had read my tutorial on cleaning copper jewelry and information on cleaning silver and other metals first but had more questions.
HI WAS ON YOUR WEB SITE LOOKING AT WAYS TO CLEAN COPPER JEWELRY. I BEEN USING LEMON JUICE BY IT SELF IT NOT CLEANING AS GOOD AS I LIKE MAYBE I SHOULD PUT SOME SALT IN IT LIKE YOU DO MAYBE WITH SOME WATER.NOT TRIED VINAGAR YET. I NOTICE YOU SAID THE ACID IN TOMATOES WOULD CLEAN COPPER, WOULD TOMATO JUICE WORK? OR HOW ABOUT JUST CRUSHED TOMATOES? IAM KIND OF NEW WITH MAKING JEWELRY AND I MAKE COPPER BRACELETS AND NECKLESS AND RINGS. I MAKE STERLING SILVER RINGS. ANOTHER QUESTION ABOUT CLEANING STERLING SILVER. I BOUGHT SOME VERY FINE STERLING SILVER CHAINS 1.25MM TO PUT A PEARL DROP PENDANT ON(PEARL IS A GLASS PEARL(SWAROSKI CRYSTAL) ANY WAY THE CHAIN TURNS ALMOST BLACK OVER NIGHT,WHAT IS A GOOD HOME CLEANER FOR THAT? I THANK YOU FOR YOUR WEB SITE INFO TO HELP FOLKS LIKE ME. I WOULD HATE TO SELL SOMEONE A PIECE OF STERLING JEWELRY TO HAVE IT TURN AFTER WEARING IT ONE TIME,I MADE THE NECKLESS FOR MY WIFE IT TURNED OVER NIGHT,
Here is what I wrote as a response:
For copper by itself, I would definitely use the salt with the lemon juice if you’re going to use that method. After all, you can’t spend all night to get every piece of jewelry polished up! For the tomato based cleaners, I haven’t tried tomato juice or crushed tomatoes, but I would expect them to work. I’m just not sure how fast compared to the ketchup or worcestershire sauce. What I do is get cheap worcestershire sauce, use it for cleaning, then store it back in a container in the fridge for next time, so it ends up being less expensive over time and a copper polish.
Sterling silver is made up of 925 parts silver and 75 parts other metals, usually copper. That’s what makes sterling tarnish the same way as copper does, but usually slower. My guess is that there is a lot of sulphur or similar chemical in the water or air where you live. Or it’s possible that your wife has some sort of chemistry in or on her skin that turns things black very quickly. Sulphur, some perfumes, some lotions, some body chemistries, and some chemicals such as chlorine from swimming pools, will turn sterling black very quickly. In some cases it doesn’t even take overnight, depending on how strong the chemicals are. If it is something related to the environment, such as sulphur in the water, correct it by changing the environment if you can. If you can’t, then be sure to store all jewelry in a tarnish-resistant bag or in a bag with anti-tarnish paper. If it is something about the body chemistry or things used by the person wearing it, there’s not much you can do about it if the person can’t change whatever’s affecting the sterling except perhaps clean/polish it after and then store in the same type of tarnish-resistant bags overnights.
Another question is whether the chains you bought are actually sterling silver. Some unscrupulous dealers sell “silver” chains, which we may assume means they’re sterling, when they’re actually just silver colored or rhodium plated or some such thing. For that, you can only replace them with actual sterling chains.
However, one caveat to all this is that if you are soldering or otherwise heating jewelry to make it, you will need to use a proper pickling solution to get the fire scale off before polishing or regular cleaning even comes into the picture. If you need more information about that, Ganoskin at http://www.ganoksin.com/index.htm has a ton of information on soldering including cleaning after.