cleaning a silver wire wrap

Wow, this worked great on a set of rhodocrosite wrapped earrings(with chain and beads) and pendant that have always been a challenge to carefully polish, took about a minute!

I put this platter in a tin roaster
with heavy duty foil
dowsed with boiling water
basically a whole boxof baking soda

I even scrubbed it with the foil
it worked well

now I'm doing polishing/buffing
with the paste
pretty happy with the result so far

Hi all,
I don't like to correct people, and come off like some arrogant jerk or anything, so please do not take my comment the wrong way!

I just wanted to state that I totally disagree with the suggestion by Rick that it is ok to put OPALS in an ionic cleaner, or ultrasonic cleaner of any kind !!

I have been working with opals for many decades, and I can tell you that I have personally seen the destruction to an opal that an ionic or ultrasonic cleaner can do to a stone.

Unless this device is some "special" device specifically built for polishing opals, I would definitely suggest that you NEVER subject an opal to this kind of cleaning, opals contain water, and if you expose them to a frequency such as the usual 25Khz frequency that these cleaners usually use, you can actually "boil" the water inside the opal, resulting in the stone either splitting apart, or actually exploding!

Again, I don't mean to imply that I am any more of an expert at anything than anyone else, but I have seen for myself people's tears as their precious stone they have owned for years desinigrates before their very eyes, and believe me, you don't want to be responsible for destroying someone's prized opal, especially at the price they are now due to the current hike in opal costs, as so many miners have now abandoned the opal mines to mine gold in Australia instead!

Hope this helps, I just would rather err on the side of caution myself!

Chris

i dont know if it will mess with gold but you can find out easy enough take some scrap wire from your wraps and try it on that and see if it hurts it in any way -- do it a few times to see if many cleanings hurt the surface of the wire and then just try and bend a few pieces see it it gets more brittle or not -- i never tried gold but i do know with silver after a couple times it seems like the tarnish comes back faster maybe its me doing something wrong but after i dry it with a rag i wipe it down with a jewlers cloth that has polish in it

I've cleaned a lot of sterling silver in my little tumbler using stainless steel shot and a drop or two of Dawn Dish Soap. Works very well.

Now I want to clean tarnished silver that has been set with faceted stones: lab ruby, cz, topaz and others. The pieces were not tarnished when I set them.

Has anybody tried this and has it been successful?

I've used Goddard's Dip and Tarn X, but it turns many of the pieces gray. What's going on there?

Rio's Sunshine Cloth works well, but cannot get in the little nooks and crannies.

Thanks.

I use an Ionic cleaner, then buff with a silver cleaning cloth. www.amazon.com/Speed-Brite-Jewelry-Cleaner-inches/dp/B010F8LIK2/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1458418416&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=speed+brite+ionic I clean sterling chains, rings, pendants, or anything that customers bring me for cleaning. Much safer for most stones than an ultrasonic, plus those won't remove tarnish, only dirt
Speed Brite also makes a home model cleaner for about $130