Clean Tarnished Silver Jewelry
© by Elena Zharina; all rights reserved
The ingredients you'll need:
Procedure:
Depending on the degree of tarnish, results may be immediate or require a couple of minutes. Do not leave in solution for more than a couple of minutes. If silver is extremely tarnished, additional polishing may be needed before or after the tarnish bath.
Warning:
We do not recommend this cleaning method for jewelry that has precious or semi precious stones. Although, after a little research we discovered that a lot of people (including silversmiths) have used this method for cleaning gemstone jewelry with no ill effect... we don't think it's worth the risk of damaging your stones. Also be aware that this method is not good for antiqued (oxidized) silver as cleaning will remove the antiqued finish on the silver along with the tarnish.
How it works:
Silver sulfide is the stuff that makes your silver look grayish over time. This process is called oxidation. When immersed in the baking soda/salt solution, the aluminum reacts with the silver sulfide, pulling the sulpher atoms out and "plating" them onto the aluminum as aluminum sulfide. The silver that remains from the reaction is redeposited onto the silver.
