Distilled water soaks work!

Not being experienced in water treatment chemistry, the thoughts that occurred to me is that a mixture of chlorine (although the "chlorine" added is either HOCl or OCl according to what I read) could produce either the mono- di- or tri- chloride (hmm wonder if NCl3 is explosive, cause NI3 certainly is). Also, if elemental chlorine gas was used, it is a pain to handle. The chemicals are present in very low concentrations and I don't think that they would affect coins unless the water were allowed to dry on the coins, that's why I recommended a final distilled or deionized water rinse and patting them dry.

 

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Because alcohol isn't nearly as good at removing the kind of sticky stuff that acetone gobbles up. I have seen people recommend it at times; for example, it would probably do a fine job of removing certain kinds of ink.

Yeah, mainly it just doesn't do much to anything that you'd want to get off of a coin.

 

I'm no expert either but from my reading the final product of the reaction is mono-chloramine. It is in lower concentration than what is allowed for other contaminants, so would not be a primary part of the residue after evaporation. But I'm not concerned about the residues, only what could happen while the coin is in the wet environment. I doubt it is benign.

 

Trichloride will go boom very easily, and will kill you handily even if it doesn't. And not only can the system produce all three chlorides, it can also produce hydrazine -- but everything depends on the conditions under which the reaction takes place. It's pretty easy to maximize NH2Cl and minimize the other products, apparently.

Yes, but it's cheap. So you do see tanks of it at most water treatment plants, and many swimming pools. If you're treating lots of water, it's the most economical agent, even when you fold in the costs of safety equipment and training.

 

I remember doing an experiment about 10 years ago, which I published on another forum, where I used a coin dipping solution (EZest I believe) to do a quick dip on a toned AU Kennedy half. I went through the recommended procedure, following up with final clean distilled water rinse. I then ran a very small amount of clean distilled water over the coin and onto a mirror, and let the water dry. It was shocking how much residue (presumably from the dipping solution) was still present on the coin after the normal rinses. I'd expect this residue to cause the surface to be unstable, and tone in ugly ways over time and under the right conditions. This is why I don't personally recommend ANY sort of rinse, and especially not a dip.

Edited to add: I do think that the pure distilled water rinse should be OK. It won't on its own leave any residues, so all it can leave is what's already on the coin.

 

I had a friend who worked with it in his lab and sometimes when I walked in, there would be traces in the air...my breathing reflex would simply shut down.

 

When I have used eZest, I first wash my hands, run hot water in the sink and gently place the coin where it can be deluged with hot water. I then do a quick dip and return the coin to the stream of rumming hot water. After a final distilled water rinse, I pat it dry.

 

IIRC that's similar to what I did, though I did not run the coin with hot water before the dip, and followed with two final distilled water rinses.

Edited to add: I think that the time of the rinses may be the key. The coin may need to sit in distilled water for a fairly long time to ensure all the residue is dissolved. I never followed up on that.

 

I am not a dipper (I am adamantly against it as I believe it is coin cleaning and/or doctoring) but when I did my experiment I asked for proper procedure, and not one person mentioned using baking soda rinse. This was over on CU forum and I received many replies, but few folks agreed on the exact procedure, so I ended up using a conglomerate of best practices. I suppose the baking soda rinse may have become a best practice in the last 10 years? It seems reasonable and would help neutralize the surface. Dissolved, of course. Perhaps I should repeat my experiment now with this "new" best practice, and see if any residues are left. I expect there will be, but only an actual experiment can scientifically prove that.

 

We've gone way off topic, but perhaps you could document the proper procedure for doing the dip, and I'll follow that and check for residues? Sounds like a new thread..

 

I somehow lost track of this thread. I’m reading down and just got to this. The orange color is rust. I’ve pulled the coins out. They’re drying. So... what does rust mean? That the metal coins are rusting in the water and should not be soaked? The metal is “nickel bonded steel”.

 

Whether it's just dissolved oxygen in the water, or some electrochemical thing between the nickel and steel, it looks like you're corroding away more metal. I'd stop the experiment.

 

Oh...dang...I'm sincerely sorry to be right. Nickel, zinc and iron are extremely difficult to cle.. conserve as far as I know. They kind of look like zincolns with zinc rot. Don't know what can be done for them.

 

No worries gentlemen, these coins are duplicates and I was just experimenting. This experiment is complete. These coins will get dried and at some point gifted to a potential future coin collector.

 

I will second what Doug said above. Gold and silver coins can be successfully clea... conserved, copper becomes MUCH harder and for aluminum, nickel, zinc, etc. I have pretty much given up.

 

Well, putting such a high bar on dipping correctly just reinforces my opinion that dipping is a bad thing. How many folks out there do you think are doing it the "right" way? Probably....none. Yet the coins they are dipping are ending up in slabs, without it being noted they have been dipped, and because they are likely leaving residues and such on the coin surface, those coins are going to be unstable over time. If stored in perfect conditions, no problem, but again how many folks ensure their coins are stored in perfect conditions? Probably...none.

 

Some are. Some aren't. Like Doug said, you have to know what you're doing.

Many folks would argue that perfect conditions don't exist. Best conditions, perhaps, but not perfect.