![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's scientific!
Aug. 18th, 2003 01:45 pmSomehow Eric and I started talking this weekend about that wacky silver-polishing technique using a piece of aluminum foil, and I decided that I must try it. Except neither of us could remember the formula. I thought it used vinegar, Eric thought baking soda. So, I Googled. I hit upon the right search combination, and found a lovely website provided by the University of Wisconsin (I think?) (link below) which explained the whole process. You do use baking soda, rather than vinegar.
After reading the instructions, I got out an old plastic dishpan that is now used for storing cleaners. I cleaned the crud out of it and lined it with a sheet of aluminum foil. I heated two quarts (1/2 gallon) of water in a stainless steel pot and added 1/2 cup of baking soda. The baking soda, it turns out, fizzes and bubbles when it hits the gently boiling water, so it has to be added very slowly. It boiled over into a mess on the stovetop at one point.
In the dishpan, I laid three little vases that my sister-in-law gave us a couple of years ago for Christmas. They are silver plated, and had badly tarnished to a near-black color. I laid them on their sides, so that each was touching the aluminum foil. The contact is important, it turns out. Then I poured the baking-sodaed hot (near boiling) water into the dishpan. Bingo! The vases were almost instantly silver again! At least, any place they were actually in the water. The water was shallow in the dishpan, so I had to roll them a bit so that they whole surface was in the water at least once.
The Wisconsin website explains that, rather than being silver oxide, as I had thought, tarnish is in fact silver sulfide. Sulfur in the air reacts with silver to turn it black. The hot water/baking soda/aluminum foil technique actually reverses the tarnish process, restoring the silver to silver. It's great for something that is only silver plated, like my little vases, because polishing silver means rubbing off the tarnished layer of silver with an abrasive polish, usually a cream. What I should have expected, but didn't, was the byproduct -- sulfur. When that hot water reacted with the tarnish and the aluminum foil (an electrochemical process, BTW), the byproduct was sulfur vapor, which rose easily into the air on the steam that was already rising from the hot water to begin with. Phew! Thank Goodness it was still cool enough to have the windows open, because it did make a stink for a little while.
Now I have amazingly shiny little silver vases. I keep staring at them because they look so brand-spanking-new. And I want to go find every silver thing I own and de-tarnish it this way. It's just so magical!
Here's the full explanation from the Wisconsin website:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/HOMEEXPTS/TARNISH.html
After reading the instructions, I got out an old plastic dishpan that is now used for storing cleaners. I cleaned the crud out of it and lined it with a sheet of aluminum foil. I heated two quarts (1/2 gallon) of water in a stainless steel pot and added 1/2 cup of baking soda. The baking soda, it turns out, fizzes and bubbles when it hits the gently boiling water, so it has to be added very slowly. It boiled over into a mess on the stovetop at one point.
In the dishpan, I laid three little vases that my sister-in-law gave us a couple of years ago for Christmas. They are silver plated, and had badly tarnished to a near-black color. I laid them on their sides, so that each was touching the aluminum foil. The contact is important, it turns out. Then I poured the baking-sodaed hot (near boiling) water into the dishpan. Bingo! The vases were almost instantly silver again! At least, any place they were actually in the water. The water was shallow in the dishpan, so I had to roll them a bit so that they whole surface was in the water at least once.
The Wisconsin website explains that, rather than being silver oxide, as I had thought, tarnish is in fact silver sulfide. Sulfur in the air reacts with silver to turn it black. The hot water/baking soda/aluminum foil technique actually reverses the tarnish process, restoring the silver to silver. It's great for something that is only silver plated, like my little vases, because polishing silver means rubbing off the tarnished layer of silver with an abrasive polish, usually a cream. What I should have expected, but didn't, was the byproduct -- sulfur. When that hot water reacted with the tarnish and the aluminum foil (an electrochemical process, BTW), the byproduct was sulfur vapor, which rose easily into the air on the steam that was already rising from the hot water to begin with. Phew! Thank Goodness it was still cool enough to have the windows open, because it did make a stink for a little while.
Now I have amazingly shiny little silver vases. I keep staring at them because they look so brand-spanking-new. And I want to go find every silver thing I own and de-tarnish it this way. It's just so magical!
Here's the full explanation from the Wisconsin website:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/HOMEEXPTS/TARNISH.html
