What is the recommended way of cleaning silver and silver-plate?
There used to be stuff called Silvo (probably by analogy with Brasso?) but it no longer seems to be available, at least here. I wondered if it had been decreed that Silvo was not good for silver, because it abraded it?
In any case, how do people clean silver nowadays?
I use a liquid cleaner which is available at Waitrose and probably other places.
Mary
The use of any silver polish is not recommended by antique dealers and the norm is...luke warm water and pieces of tinfoil balls thrown into the water and left overnight or as long as it takes for the silver to sparkle.
Silvo is still available. I bought some recently. It is not as readily available as Brasso in my experience as it took a bit of shopping around. Google on Silvo wadding.
mark
The old trick of lining a stainless steel or Pyrex roasting tin with aluminium foil, filling it to a depth of 25.4 mm with scalding hot water and then adding a heaped teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda (No other Sodium compounds please) will remove tarnish from silver and leave it sparkling in a few minutes.
It is probably just a speedier version of the above.
NB it is aggressive and removes silver, but I doubt if any abrasive cleaner would be any gentler on the silver.
DG
25.4mm ? That's a bit precise isn't it ?
I presume that you put the silver in this mix ( It's not some remote process is it ? lol)
What if the piece of silver is bigger than that ?
Many moons ago, when I was almost a young man, I worked on computers manufactured by an RCA. They recommended using Pepsodent toothpaste to clean the gold contacts on PCBs. They then issued a notice to say please desist from that practice as it was dissolving the gold contacts. What wallies, I thought everyone knew that you wondered where the yellow went when using Pepsodent!
IME Peek is one of the best around
Why no other sodium chemical?
I was taught to use your method with just as much common salt added, but only warm water. These days I use a small ultrasonic bath.
Dave
enemies of silver include table salt, olives, salad dressing, eggs, vinegar and fruit juices.
and sunlight.
In message , Mark writes
Silver dip ?
I think he really means about an inch :-)
Dave
Can you provide any links for this, please? I would be most interested in this.
OK then, I'll tell the wife not to wear silver at any dinner parties she attends :-)
Dave
Why, does she dribble over her jewellery?
Owain
Several years ago I bought an aluminium sheet, with instructions to place it in the base of a container with 'X amount' of water and 'Y amount' of washing soda. 'That' amount of water didn't reach high enough in a plastic washing up bowl to cover any large items of silver, and I found the best container to use was a rectangular mop bucket.
I don't actually clean the silver tea services any more, I gave them away to the family! Problem solved!!
I use a number of techniques for cleaning silver as part of my craft, and still I find it's hard to beat Goddards Long-Term silver polish.
Regards,
Much worse is gas - natural or otherwise. You can't escape minuscule amounts of it in a household's atmosphere and it produces black silver sulphide on the surface. some people's fingers also attack silver. Mu husband's sweat attaqcks gold.
Yes, I didn't believe it either, having worked in a lab I knew something about it. The goldsmith didn't believe it either until he sold Spouse a gold cased watch and had to replace it with a stainless steel backed one six months later.
Mary
That's the one I was thinking of!
Mary
Thus spake Derek Geldard ( snipped-for-privacy@miniac.demon.co.uk) unto the assembled multitudes:
Unless the object is too big to submerge under the inch of water.
I cleaned a silver tankard once by filling a large enamel saucepan with boiling water, chucked in a few pieces of crumpled aluminium foil followed by the silver tankard, and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Came up a treat.
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