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Restoring a coin. What type of damage is this?
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<p>[QUOTE="SuperDave, post: 2556864, member: 1892"]Actually, if you're careful with the technique, it's the <b>optimal</b> way to remove toning from silver because it's a chemical reversal of the toning process - the sulfur which combined with the silver to form the toning (silver sulfide) has a greater affinity with the aluminum, and departs the silver for greener pastures, so to speak. It is not intrusive like "cleaning" methods which physically remove the silver sulfide by either rubbing it away - as the OP did - or dissolving it, as in dipping. All it does is remove the offending sulfur and leaves pure silver behind, just like the coin originally appeared. </p><p><br /></p><p>The devil is in the details to protect the coin, though, because you're admittedly exposing it to a potentially abrasive solution with the baking soda. So you minimize that by bringing the silver to an already-heated solution (boiling water temperatures are not necessary) and keep the solution heated evenly (so as to minimize convection currents moving abrasively over the coin).</p><p><br /></p><p>You can see those currents in action by heating the liquid in a clear container and dropping food coloring into the solution to see how it "wanders" under various heating regimens. This enables you to determine the most "stable" situation in terms of temperature, liquid volume (that's <i>important</i>) and the configuration of the container.</p><p><br /></p><p>You'd probably be pretty surprised at how effective it is at removing toning safely and without trace, once you have the technique dialed in. <b>As long as it's silver sulfide</b>.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="SuperDave, post: 2556864, member: 1892"]Actually, if you're careful with the technique, it's the [B]optimal[/B] way to remove toning from silver because it's a chemical reversal of the toning process - the sulfur which combined with the silver to form the toning (silver sulfide) has a greater affinity with the aluminum, and departs the silver for greener pastures, so to speak. It is not intrusive like "cleaning" methods which physically remove the silver sulfide by either rubbing it away - as the OP did - or dissolving it, as in dipping. All it does is remove the offending sulfur and leaves pure silver behind, just like the coin originally appeared. The devil is in the details to protect the coin, though, because you're admittedly exposing it to a potentially abrasive solution with the baking soda. So you minimize that by bringing the silver to an already-heated solution (boiling water temperatures are not necessary) and keep the solution heated evenly (so as to minimize convection currents moving abrasively over the coin). You can see those currents in action by heating the liquid in a clear container and dropping food coloring into the solution to see how it "wanders" under various heating regimens. This enables you to determine the most "stable" situation in terms of temperature, liquid volume (that's [I]important[/I]) and the configuration of the container. You'd probably be pretty surprised at how effective it is at removing toning safely and without trace, once you have the technique dialed in. [B]As long as it's silver sulfide[/B].[/QUOTE]
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Restoring a coin. What type of damage is this?
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