Cleaning Badly Tarnished Liquid Silver Necklaces

A few days ago I posted a couple of sterling silver liquid silver necklaces that I had picked up. Each weighed about an ounce but were very badly tarnished. If sterling silver is left out in open air the silver reacts with sulfur it the air to form a coat of silver sulfide. That leaves our silver with a ugly coat of tarnish! So to solve the tarnish problem I went back to Chemistry 101 (and it's been a very long time sadly!) I looked up the exact formula for all you chemistry nerds out there:

3 Ag2S + 2 Al → 6 Ag + Al2S3
silver sulfide + aluminum → silver + aluminum sulfide

Aluminum is one of the metals that has a much higher ability to react with sulfur than does silver. Here's how we make that happen:

1. Line a pan with aluminum foil

2.Place silver directly onto the foil

1. Add baking soda, this can be done by sprinkling it directly on the silver or by adding it to water in a ratio of one cup per gallon

1. Add hot water preferably boiling temperature

1. Watch the tarnish disappear! I had to do three cycles to get it to this end picture as it was very badly tarnished.

Here I have the second necklace for comparison, I still have yet to clean it up.

I had tried a couple other methods that didn't work real well. I tried putting baking soda on a soft cloth and pulling it over the strands but it didn't to much. @bitcoinman recommended using a magic eraser which I tried, it did help some but it might have taken hours of scrubbing. You may want to note that with liquid silver they are small silver beads typically strung around a small steel wire or a string. In my case it was a string so it took a fair amount of rinsing with distilled water to get it off the threads because they had stiffened. I'm still need to do it a few more times to get it back to the same feel as before treatment. So for time involved in cleaning liquid silver up I think it might be worth paying a jeweler to do it professionally to be honest. But it was a fun experiment!

Another note to consider is please don't clean coins! They are much more valuable with the patina.

That's my update of the sterling necklaces. Thanks for taking the time to read and for your support! Have a great Tuesday!

Reference used: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/a38284646/how-to-clean-silver-necklace/