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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Burgess, post: 4863735, member: 105098&quot;]I know distilled water. I will let someone else speak on acetone.</p><p>&nbsp;Pure distilled water should be neutral with a pH of 7 immediately after distillation, but because it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it&#039;s actually slightly acidic with a pH of 5.8 just a couple hours to a couple days time after distillation with exposure to air. not too acidic, not too alkaline, in this sense it&#039;s similar to acetone, although acetone is a solvent and can dissolve substances, it has a neutral pH also of 7, and isn&#039;t an acid or an alkaline. </p><p><br /></p><p>That said what it is good for is not leaving spots and being basically free of dissolved solids and minerals or salts for this reason it&#039;s better as a rinse than lets say tap water, which contains some form of chlorine, or well water which may be hard with dissolved minerals. like anything though, if you were to use the same distilled water coin after coin in a container, it will build up new dissolved solids, and could leave spotting or residue, always best to use fresh new distilled water for each coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as corrosion or discoloration of copper or bronze, I&#039;ve never had it happen with mild soaks in distilled water to loosen up debris caked into the coin for any of the lincoln cent versions, however, if you allowed it to soak for long periods, the debris itself may be harmful and when it dissolves becomes part of the distilled water, it may cause a problem. for this reason I say old, used dirty distilled water is bad.</p><p><br /></p><p>I use distilled water for new BU coins from circulation, treating the surface of potential contaminants like die grease, or dust or someones fingerprints from the rolling process before putting them in 2x2s. I also use it on circulation finds that have seen some wear or dirt without adverse effects.</p><p>However, older coins that may have spent prolonged time in soil are a different animal all together, there can be corrosion from salts or minerals or the soils pH buried under the smutz, or just uneven toning.because the smutz protected that area. you really don&#039;t know until you&#039;ve gotten under it. In this case you have to determine if it will help or hinder by removing it. repeated distilled water baths, with frequent water changes will remove soil salts even ocean salts that have penetrated the coins surface over time of it being out there and lost, you can deactivate it in this manner, but it&#039;s also likely the damage has already been done. A lot like removing glue from a copper coin thats been on there for a year with acetone, the surface underneath that glue will not be the same color as the rest of the coin no matter what you do to it, trying to &quot;fix it&quot; will make it worse.</p><p><br /></p><p>The idea is really conservation here, not correction or repair, but just to stop what&#039;s affecting it from continuing to affect it.</p><p><br /></p><p>with BU uncirculated new coins I know 99.999% of the time, it&#039;s going to be a little grease or some fine metal dust from he minting process on the surface of the coin which I like to remove before putting them away longer term. </p><p>With circulated coins, it could be all kinds of things it&#039;s been exposed to, and results may vary from one situation to the next, you really don&#039;t know what&#039;s underneath the gunk until you get under the gunk, it could be corrosion, or it could have protected it and bright and shiny under the gunk, and either way you have uneven coloration but you won&#039;t know until you do it.</p><p><br /></p><p>with copper/bronze, there&#039;s a whole another school of thought for preservation using different oils and such, the &quot;copperheads&quot; do though. I have no idea how that works. Also as I understand it, there is &quot;browning&quot; or toning copper and bronze using various methods, my opinion, this takes a lot of practice, experimentation, and failures to figure it out and not do damage and a bit more advanced for my tastes, sort of specialized.</p><p><br /></p><p>Youtube video about preserving early copper coins:</p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]U4PVFXM2atw[/MEDIA]</p><p>I found it slightly interesting, however it doesn&#039;t cover the years of using oils on copper coins, how to do it from start to finish for preservation purposes,but the main idea is the light layer of oil blocks the coin from contact with more damaging contaminants like sulfer.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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