After a week or two of waiting, my order from ancientcoins.ca came in: Two uncleaned Romans, a cleaned, unattributed Roman, and an AR Hungarian denar(i) from 1570. Needless to say, I am very happy with what I have so far, esp. the Hungarian coin, which is my first medival piece of numismatia. The "very" dirty uncleaned (the other is merely "dirty") is pretty small - maybe half the size of the other uncleaned - so maybe it's a Greek or imitation? It's a possibility, I guess. I after an initial nylon-brush scrubbing, a week of olive-oil soaking, and more scrubbing, I can make out come details on the larger uncleaned, though I feel that the few seconds of brass-brushing I did after the soaking dug too deep into some of the coin's surface, revealing some bronze shiny-ness. As a result, I'm sticking to the nylon brush for cleaning that one. I electrocuted the really dirty one after soaking, but the odd thing is that the coin itself never really bubbles, but rather the alligator clip attatched to it does. After about 10-15 minutes, the water became very cloudy (yellow-green and algae-like), but not too much seemed to have come off from the coin, yet it must have if the water was dirty. Am I doing something wrong here? Also, I took photos of all the coins (in addition to my newest buy: A large-date 1864 two-cent piece in about F condition), but alas I left my camera at home. Tomorrow though, I'll post pictures. But until then, maybe someone has answers to my electrolysis problem?
Your doing nothing wrong. Do it a little bit at a time. Remember, only the metal will foam and fiz up and that's how the coin cleans itself, a small layer of metal is destroyed and with this the crud is taken off too, understand? What you have is some of the residual oil in the crust around the coin blocking the electrical current from the metal of the coin to the solution. You MUST remember not to over-do it as you can never correct the pitting which will happen if you OVER electrolosis the coin. Good Luck B
Thanks for the tips. I think I'll still let it soak, and just do a tiny bit at a time. Hopefully next time around, I'll be able to scrub off enough crud so that I can actually get some electricity flowing through the metal of the coin itself.
Jhonn,be vary careful,as water & electricity do not mix! We wouldn't want you going zip,zap,& dance at all! Aidan.
I can guess that you have used a step-down transformer.You still have to be careful with those ones,however. Aidan.
