Featured Verdigris....Make your own solution to eliminate this ugly corrosion

Not if he's a man of his word

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I gotta say this is not new. I first heard of this by another of our own @Kentucky .
I've used this method on ancient coins to cure BD, it works great.
I also like verdicare its a great product butdoes have its limitations just as this guys recipe.
Bottom line, I've used both methods on multiple coins both ancient & modern. Both work, just don't be stupid (dillhole) about it.

 

Thanks for the meaning of the slang. I prefer the word "stupid" as everyone understands that word!

 

I thought you would like that, lol. Actually stupid is a cleaner more ct acceptable version, edited is more acurate for the word. neither of which is acceptable

 

Turnabout is fair play. Sorry, I was at my daughter's house. I have a BS and PhD in chemistry (Doctorate in Physical Organic). I did post-graduate work in polymers and high pressure chemistry and started working in the magnetic tape industry (now dead along with the buggy whip factories) until I was laid off twice. After the second time, I got a teaching credential and taught chemistry in high school for 11 years and in a junior college (this is my last year...whew). My coin collecting is completely eclectic, but most recently I have gotten interested in ancient coins and the ancient forum is one of the most interesting and friendly on this site. I have an interest in coin cleaning...ahem...coin conservation and have learned much from the people here although they are somewhat anal retentive (love you-guys though). @BadThad is a good guy and has experience in the metal fluids area that I will not dispute. I look forward to seeing some of your coins.

 

Baking soda and apple vinegar is good for making a volcano, nothing else.

 

I know it's just a joke I don't clean Coins

From the hobby center and think tank of MTS.LLC

 

Oy!! If you "know", why say it without making it CLEAR you're supposedly joking, especially when posting nonsense like " From the hobby center and think tank of MTS.LLC" after it? Can you not grasp the fact that by doing so you're presenting yourself as knowledgeable?

This forum is already loaded with enough potentially harmful crap; please don't make it worse.

 

It's looking more and more as if none of them are men of their words... go figure.

 

Jokes are better if someone other than you get them also. Use a smiley...works for @Insider...uh...those aren't jokes!!!

 

Thanks for the touch up

From the hobby center and think tank of MTS.LLC

 

It would be helpful to see before and after photos of coins treated with this method.

 

Good Lord, how were you able to stay in the same room?

I was always taught that H2S was more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, and many times more toxic than carbon monoxide, but not as dangerous -- because the smell drives people away long before it reaches dangerous levels.

My first chemistry set had "experiments" for making sulfur dioxide (just burn sulfur) and hydrogen sulfide (actually a couple of paths for this). I'm still a little surprised my parents put up with it.

 

Eh...none of these are good and are to be avoided. The dosage of each of these necessary for death is HCN>H2S>CO however the amount of H2S released by dipping a coin is miniscule.

I actually managed to get a mild case of HCN poisoning once when, as an undergraduate, we were running a reaction from which it could be produced. I surmise this from the fact that when I stepped out into the hallway to have a smoke, it made me somewhat nauseous which is one of the first signs of HCN poisoning (sensitivity to nicotine). I know several students in the lab that did get pretty sick that night.

Want to read more... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.chem/he5_H_2HPpM

 

Had a fume hood and he was preparing the experiment just at its edge. I din't know he got a sniff until he reacted. I was not affected an laughed at the time.

 

Greg, if you're a chemist, why did you make no mention of ambient temperature, air pressure (altitude) or humidity? Also, how often have you successfully submitted a coin after the 1% bath of trisodium hydrogendicarbonate? I would assume that if you're leaving the coin in the solution long enough to get past the outer most layer of verdigris, then you'd again be dealing with loss of patination. I dunno. I'm lazy, and I like Thad's product: I drop a little on the spot and tilt the coin until the bubble flows over all the devices and fields, turn the coin upside down on a very soft cloth and repeat. Flip over again, then let dry 24 hrs. Verdigris stopped. I guess if I wanted to remove the stuff, I could always poke at it, but my main goal is stopping the process, since I live in a hot, high humidity environment with high sulfur volumes in the air.

 

I prefer heat. No need to worry about the the little things you mention or the chemicals you use.

 

I would really love to see some before and after pictures of coins conserved using any of the methods described in this thread. I understand the chemistry, but as collectors I like to also see the results.

I am just now getting into ancients, and don't normally buy coins that require this level of conservation. But I am curious, how does verdicare affect the patina?

 

So would I!!

 

Unfortunately this formula doesn't appear correct according to a tutorial on the ANCIENT COIN CLUB OF LOS ANGELES' website. The two major issues being that a) you don't know which form of sodium carbonate you are dealing with as it has five forms of hydrate depending on how it has been produced/stored and b) even if you did know, the formula would produce an approximately 19% solution.
Therefore it makes much more sense to buy powdered sodium sesquicarbonate (which is cheap) and then simply add a convenient quantity to 19 times its weight of distilled water. I picked 1kg of sodium sesquicarbonate for £5/US$6 on ebay.
Apparently this is the formula the British Museum in London uses.