Orchid Friends, This thought has been going around in my brain for
awhile. Please excuse the fact that I will not reference any
particular post or person.
Some months ago we had a thread that mentioned how distructive
chlorine was to silver and gold. Someone mentioned that she did a
lot of swimming in a pool and was repeatedly losing the prongs to
her expensive solitare engagement ring.
More recently someone mentioned that they were using chlorine bleach
to get a patina on silver and again someone wrote that the bleach
was distructive in that it was basically removing everything in the
sterling that wasn’t fine silver.
We’ve been having a thread about depletion guilding on silver for
reticulation and/or kum-boo. Do you see where I am going with this?
If we do the normal depletion guild using the torch and pickle then
when we are done we have a fine silver surface but immediately
underneath we have black oxides. If we deplete a reasonably thick
piece of sterling with chlorine bleach it would seem that we would
still get the fine silver skin but would not have the oxides.
I am resubmitting this request from a few weeks back because I got
no response and sure would like one…
Orchid Friends, This thought has been going around in my brain for
awhile. Please excuse the fact that I will not reference any
particular post or person.
Some months ago we had a thread that mentioned how distructive
chlorine was to silver and gold. Someone mentioned that she did a
lot of swimming in a pool and was repeatedly losing the prongs to
her expensive solitare engagement ring.
More recently someone mentioned that they were using chlorine bleach
to get a patina on silver and again someone wrote that the bleach
was distructive in that it was basically removing everything in the
sterling that wasn’t fine silver.
We’ve been having a thread about depletion guilding on silver for
reticulation and/or kum-boo. Do you see where I am going with this?
If we do the normal depletion guild using the torch and pickle then
when we are done we have a fine silver surface but immediately
underneath we have black oxides. If we deplete a reasonably thick
piece of sterling with chlorine bleach it would seem that we would
still get the fine silver skin but would not have the oxides.
Your thoughts?
Orchid Rules!..Karla in sunny Southern California
Some months ago we had a thread that mentioned how distructive
chlorine was to silver and gold. Someone mentioned that she did a
lot of swimming in a pool and was repeatedly losing the prongs to
her expensive solitare engagement ring.
This is caused by stress corrosion cracking it is most common in
white golds in high stress areas like prongs where they are bent
over the stone for more details see the article at
More recently someone mentioned that they were using chlorine
bleach to get a patina on silver and again someone wrote that the
bleach was distructive in that it was basically removing everything
in the sterling that wasn't fine silver.
I do not belive the bleach is removing base metals. I belive what
is happening is it is making silver chloride on the surface of the
piece. Silver chloride is photo reactive and it turns a dark purple
to black color upon exposure to light.
We've been having a thread about depletion guilding on silver
for reticulation and/or kum-boo. Do you see where I am going with
this?
If we do the normal depletion guild using the torch and pickle
then when we are done we have a fine silver surface but immediately
underneath we have black oxides. If we deplete a reasonably thick
piece of sterling with chlorine bleach it would seem that we would
still get the fine silver skin but would not have the oxides.
I think you are stuck with using acids to remove the copper oxide
formed during heating bleach is not going to do what you want
Jim Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts
Phone (360) 756-6550
Toll Free (877) 408 7287
Fax (360) 756-2160
@James_Binnion
Member of the Better Business Bureau