Proper acetone procedure

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Ditto

 

And there are many who agree with Dave.

 

SuperDave, posted: "If the acetone is leaving something behind, you've used it insufficiently."

That word means either the quality of the acetone or the amount of acetone used was insufficient. Proving even a blind squirrel can find a nut when they are wandering around an unfamiliar yard they don't belong in.

 

Had you read the numerous post here about using acetone, I will bet every one of them says you are to use PURE acetone. i.e. the quality is not in question.

 

Had you read the thread; and since you disagreed with one of the posters who disagreed with SD enough to post this comment: "And there are many who agree with Dave." You could have figured out that SD used a word (insufficient) that included both the quality and quantity of the acetone. I understood his post. Since it is your bet that: "every one of them says you are to use PURE acetone." Then it follows that both your post and SD's were superfluous in this thread. Thanks anyway.

PS Please let SD know as he has chosen to ignore my posts

 

That doesn't make them right.

 

That's true but IMO...one-on-one, much of the time - excluding photography.

 

I find it interesting I know of 3 chemists and 2 chemical engineers on this site. four of them specifically state that a rinse is not necessary. And I do not know the other's choice. Then there are a bunch of other people who seen to think that rinsing a dry coin does something to it.

 

The highly deionized water in my lab is about 5.8-6.5. Deionized water is superior to distilled water IMO.

 

Ground hog day! LOL

I've seen your "whitest cast" exactly one time and I've use acetone on tens of thousands of coins. It was due to dehydration of a very thin and unseen long-chain organic residue. I though of you when I saw it! Well, I soaked the coin in xylene and rinsed again with acetone....no more haze.

You've contradicted yourself Doug. You say rinsing with water removed the haze, it didn't remove it, it just rehydrated it. I bet if you hit it with acetone again, the haze would reappear. The water didn't remove the haze, it just made it "invisible". So, your coin was rehydrated, water DID stick to the surface.

You're not thinking on a small enough scale Doug. Believe me, water WILL adhere to a bare coin surface. It may only be a molecule or so thick, but it is there. By rinsing with water after acetone, you're reapplying that layer. The trick when rinsing with acetone is to immediately put the coin into a holder like an Airtite. The surface absorption of water would be almost nothing if done quickly.

 

I am not sure just what you do to deionize water, but at our plant, the distilled water was 10 - 100 cleaner than deionized water by measuring its conductivity. However, he had is own distilling system specifically for lab work.

 

The term is actually adsorb water, and I do agree with you that regardless of a water rinse or not, the coin will have some water on the surface by adsorption.

 

Is xylene effective at all for silver coins?

Or, is it mostly for copper coins?

 

Xylene is great on silver.

 

It does both the same.

 

Your organic-based residue holds additional water, never allowing it to fully evaporate. That's why your haze doesn't return after "drying". Try baking one of your haze coins at >100°C for an hour - that haze will return.

 

So let me see if I understand this...

Step one conserve coin. Step two acetone dip to dry it with or w/o rinsing it in water. Then, bake the coin to make sure anything that is not visible after drying does not become visible after the coin is baked.

I never knew dipping a coin was this involved. Anyone still use a hot air dryer or multi-filtered compressed air?