I thought that title would get your attention …but yeah …its true.
im not really sure of what the ratio is of water to pickle powder
but i noticed after awhile, after i solder, the pickle turns the
gold orang-ey…and i dont know why or how to stop it…does anyone
know why and /or how to stop this.
How often should i cahnge my pickel and how much should i put in?
Buy that sure sounds like your copper plating your gold. That would
be consistant with several things. Not using boric acid and alcohol
on the gold to prevent fire scale on the gold will put copper oxides
into the pickle. Then you’d need some metal baser than the copper in
the pickle. Something like iron or stainless steel tweezers or wire
on which the gold is hung in the pickle. The latter, iron, isn’t the
only thing that can do it. Brass wire, for example, contains zinc,
and that too can, more slowly, cause copper to plate out on the work.
Try making sure only the gold goes into the pickle, or if hung on a
hook as many of us do, make sure it’s clean copper, silver, or gold,
rather than anything that might have a baser alloy. Use a glass or
plastic container for the pickle, not metal.
Generally, you can use the pickle until it’s almost exhausted, by
which point it will have turned a decided color, such as the sort of
greenish tone if you work with a lot of white golds, or pale blue
from copper oxides if you work sterling or ordinary gold alloys. If
it’s still close to the original color, and still cleans off the
oxides on the metal quickly enough, you should not need to change
it.
Peter