Gold-filled wire turning pink

[DesireeO68985]

Hello all! I am working on some bangles and ring using gold-filled wire. Some wire is 12g so I have accidentally overheated it when soldering which has left a pinkish color on the piece. Pickling didn’t get rid of it. I have read that you can soak 14k gold pieces briefly in a 50/50 hydrogen peroxide and apple cider vinegar solution to lift the copper off of the surface. Does this work/is this safe for gold-filled pieces as well? Thanks!

[jeffg-moderator]

In gold-fill there’s a thin layer of gold laminated over brass. As far as I know of you overheat gold-fill the brass seeps through the thin layer of gold and turns the metal pink. I don’t think there is anyway to remove the pink once gold-fill has been overheated, but I could be wrong?

If you want to try hydrogen peroxide and pickle to remove the pink, Bill Seely from Reactive Metals wrote a thorough explanation of how to mix it in this thread from 2012. I’ve never heard of a vinegar and hydrogen peroxide mixture, but I’ve used this hydrogen peroxide & pickle mixture many times. It works well to remove the pink from brass.

Brass is turning pink in pickle

Ok everybody here is a copy of my original paper on Hydrogen Peroxide Pickle. I reversed engineered the process from a commercial pickling process. It must have been about 1979 at the University of Kansas. HYDROGEN PEROXIDE PICKLE by Bill Seeley Heat-treating and soldering of copper and copper basedalloys can often coat the metals with a combination of black (cupric) and red (cuprous) oxide. The black oxide is easily removed in a standard warm sulfuric acid or Sparex bath. This will lea…

Maybe someone else has other suggestions.

Best of luck!!

Jeff

[rmeixner]

I use super pickle to remove red stains from heated brass. It is just fresh pH down and water with hydrogen peroxide added to it. Would this help remove the pink stain?

[Pam6]

I’ve used super pickle to remove the pink blush from gold filled material. A 50/50-ish mix of new/clean pickle and standard 3% hydrogen peroxide from the pharmacy. I use citric acid as a pickle and it works great.

Heating it makes it work faster, so keep an eye on it as it’s actually etching the surface of the metal. Once the gold is clean remove and rinse in water. The used super pickle can be returned to your regular pickle pot.

Good luck!
Pam

[DesireeO68985]

Thank you! I got Citric acid and tried your solution and it worked great. I don’t think I left it in long enough but I’ll play around with it. Thanks!!

[DesireeO68985]

Yes! I tried a recipe from some others for super pickle. Thanks so much!

[DesireeO68985]

This is so helpful! Thank you for the link!

[Pam6]

Hi Desiree,

So happy it worked!
Thanks for sharing your results.

Pam