Equal parts pickle and peroxide (the kind you can buy in the
drugstore), hot, will fix the copper blush in seconds to a minute or
two at most. Stand and watch it-- if you go off and leave it, it
will get etched.
Wrong. I've left the items in for hours before and.. NO ETCHING,
EVER, in 25 yrs! You must also mix the 1 part water.
Well, this is what I love about Orchid. You have two apparently
contradictory statements about a process, both from people who ought
to know. The great part is, you can try one or both ways for
yourself and draw your own conclusion. Especially in a situation like
this that requires no big investment of time or money.
The Peroxide Pickle was developed by Bill Sealy of
Reactive Metals Studio.
His paper is Available on his website:
The copper blush on silver is a reduction - oxidation (redox)
electrochemical process. In this case Iron is oxidzed and copper in
the solution is reduced and plated out. Silver in
solution(photographers used Hypo) will plate silver out on brass with
zinc being oxidized --another redox process.
I will remove the copper blush by just adding some drugstore peroxide
to a contaminated pickle. No magic recipe quantity. The peroxide will
decompose to water very quickly.
I’ve been reading alot of feedback on my question about silver coming
out of the tumbler with a copper coating - Many have talked about the
pickle before hand, but to make it further clearer, we never used
pickle in cleaning before the woven bracelets went into the
tumbler… I understand the chemical reactions which happen to silver
when steel or nickel is introduced into the pickle - but this was
just a simple drop into the tumbler and let it vibrate - Perhaps the
one comment that made sense was leaving it in the tumbler so long -
sometimes “more” isn’t better.
I am still having trouble seeing how you could have an electrolytic
deposit of copper without a source of copper ions from an acid or
salt. Is there any chance it could be just a tint of sulfide from the
rubber giving a bit of a yellow patina?