Restoring Tarnished Silver Jewelry: What Went Wrong?

Question
I put my silver charm bracelet into gold dip cleaner and it was in for quite a while it is now very brown looking, have I ruined it?.  The bracelet and heart charm and a one of charms are stamped silver but I think the other charms are sterling silver. Help it was a 21st birthday present from my Dad 33 years ago and it has great sentimental value.

Thank you

Carol

Answer

Steve Hi Carol, Sorry to hear of your delimma but the good news is that it is easily solved. You have a couple of options. Firstly. do not put Silver in a gold dip. The dip designed for gold has chemicals that attacks the Silver, hence the brown color. All the "dips" on the consumer market are not really that good. You can take the bracelet to a good jeweler and he/she can professionally restore your item to like new condition for a pretty no,inal charge or you can do it yourself by going to a hardware store and buying a tube of Semichrome polish. This is the best thing I have found over the years to clean up things like this. If in fact the Semichrome doesn't work to your satisfaction then the Jeweler route is recommended. Good luck.

Steve Kretser