QuestionQUESTION: Dear Peter,
I own a retail shop and I sell mostly silver jewellery, plain and with stones. Do you have any suggestion about a cleaning machine that will replace the manual cleaning? It gets harder every year to clean the jewellery by hand, and I have no idea what to buy when it comes to the automatic machines. Somebody told me that the one with the little bronze or metal balls is good but then someone else told me the one with the little pieces of wood is better. All I care is for the best result of course and for a machine the holds up a good amount of silver jewellery so I won't have to clean them by hand one by one. Thank you Sincerely Thomas
ANSWER: Greetings,
I think what you are needing is a tumbler and I think the medium would be walnut shells.
You need to go to a Jewellers Wholesaler or someone like 'Rio Grande' in Albuquerque and they should be able to advise you.
Hope this helps, P
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Dear Peter,
Thank you for your help with the tumbler. Another problem I am facing is the black spots on the surfave of some of my silver jewellery. How can I make them go away? I have tried cleaning them with a cleaning cloth for silver jewellery but nothing has happened. What causes the black spots? Is it in the making? The cast? How can this be avoided when they are making the jewellery? Sincerely Angelo Thomas
AnswerGreetings and sorry for the delay.....I needed to get away.
The black spots could be many things.
You might try using some water with te polishing cloth as this often makes them work a lot better.
The marks could also be deep fire scale in which case the edges would be ragged/irregular and you would need polishing with a polishing machine to remove them. This should be a grey colour.
If they are regular in shape, then they may just be as a result of cleaning solution that has sprayed onto them.
If they are more deep grey in colour then its possible that the silver was never melted correctly. Often boron is added to cast silver to help it flow and this sometimes doesnt melt totally leaving zebra lines in the metal.
Another thing thta may cause the spots is simply dirty equipmant when the work is made.
Or alternatively it may be slightly porous metal that was never pickled properly and what you are seeing is the discharge a bit like a pimple.
I wonder if you could get a large digi-image to me pjcoombs@bold.net.au and I may be able to give you further insight.
This is a realy hard one to answer witout the piece in my hand.
Cheers, P
