Thread: Silver Blueing
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Old February 20th 10, 10:31 PM posted to rec.crafts.jewelry
Peter W. Rowe[_2_]
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Posts: 115
Default Silver Blueing

On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:55:04 -0800, in rec.crafts.jewelry Jack Schmidling
wrote:

I was wondering when Peter would pop in and sort it all out.


You give me too much credit. I don't have all the answers. Just decent guesses
some of the time. :-)


Thanks for that explanation of the probable cause of the problem. I
don't claim to understand it all but at least it fits the situation.


And as I say, it's just a guess.


At the very least, it reminded me of the pickling solution that I have
been looking at for several years. I don't even remember what it is
other than something I bought from a swimming pool supplier.


Most likely, a product like spa-down or ph-down, which are products intended to
reduce the ph of hot tubs and swimming pools. the active chemical is sodium
bisulphate, which is the same thing in commercially sold jewelers pickling
compounds. It's a sulphuric acid salt, so it acts much the same as traditional
sulphuric acid pickle, but safer, without the nasty fumes. Most other pool
chemicals are chlorine compounds, which might also form an acid bath of used
concentrated, but that would be a hydrochloric acid variant, which isn't
effective as a pickle for silver because silver chloride isn't soluable, so such
chemicals just form a nasty scummy surface on the silver.


I put about 2" in a beaker and heated it in the MO and put one fork in
it for a most of a day. I kept looking at it and nothing ever
changed. I gave it up and rinsed it off under water but when I wiped
it with a towel, it was shiny and bright and still is after a few
days.


The normally desired action of pickle compounds is to dissolve oxides, most
commonly copper oxides formed when soldering or annealing. Tarnish, however, is
sulphides, and these are not substantially affected by pickling. Pickle doesn't
normally take off tarnish. But apparently, your extended soak did enough damage
to the surface that it weakened the sulphide layer enough so it could be wiped
off. At the same time, the extended bath also likely removed some
surface-accessable copper, leaving a surface close to fine silver. That would
tend to be slower to tarnish again, at least for a time.


It probably won't last but when given ways to solve a problem, I
always start with the simplest.


Not a bad plan many times.

...........

I have been getting group postings in my email using the email
option. This is good but disappointing that one can not respond in
email and have to come to the web to respond. Better than nothing I
guess.


For rec.crafts.jewelry, you DO have an email response option. Because the group
is moderated, all posts sent to the group get forwarded by news servers to me
for approval. I then repost acceptable posts to my own news server. That means
that if you wish to send a message to rec.crafts.jewelry, one way to do it if
you do not have direct access to a news server to post to, is to simply email
the post to . So long as the post seems to be
intended for the group, and not a personal message to the group moderator (me),
then I simply treat it as I treat any other post to the group. Slightly more
work for me, since posts sent this way do not already have a newsgroups header
imbedded in them, so I have to add one. But that's minor.

Note too, that you have many options for news access, even if your ISP doesn't
offer a news server. There are commercial news servers that sell premium access
(usually increased speed, or a larger number of accessable newsgroups, or the
like) over standard ISPs. Some of these offer a basic free level of access.
Once you've established an account and configured your news reader, any
internet connection will do.

Peter Rowe
moderator
rec.crafts.jewelry
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