Sunday, August 16, 2009

Cleaning Sterling Silver Chains

I've talked a lot about cleaning sterling silver jewelry in past blogs and given many suggestions about how to go about this process. Readers of my blogs know that I am not a fan of sterling silver dips, since they can be harmful to the finish of silver pieces.

Often, I will suggest just wiping a piece with a Sunshine cloth. But if you have tried this with a chain necklace, you will know that these can be very hard items from which to remove the tarnish because of the small links involved in the making of the chain.

I found a YouTube video which deals with just this situation. The maker of the video gives a step by step demo of how to go about it.

Basically, the cleaning involves baking soda and boiling water in a metal pan. Sterling dips use the same process, but this gets the job done without the harmful chemicals and baking soda is much cheaper to use than the store bought dips.

Most large pieces of sterling silver can be easily cleaned with a polishing cloth, but sometimes, a large ornate piece will have tarnish in the grooves (flower jewelry is especially hard to clean) and this techique would work in this case too. Please note that this techique is good for pieces without stones. (Immersion in water can loosen stones or damage foil to rhinestone pieces.)

Here is the video:


1 comment:

  1. You are providing us very informative, needful and good thing through this content related to Sterling silver chains. so please continue your good work. i am very thankful to you.

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