Showing posts with label cleaning silver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cleaning silver. Show all posts

Sunday, June 6, 2021

The Easiest and Best Way to Clean Silver


In December 2018, I wrote another article on how to clean silver. 

In that article, I discovered a product my husband uses to clean the chrome on his tires called Mothers Mag and Aluminum Polish. The product is excellent for cleaning silver, but the way I'm about to divulge is far superior.

The Easiest Way to Clean Silver that Doesn't Involve Manual Labor

In the 1980's I purchased an Electrolytic Silver Cleaning Plate

The directions for using that cleaning plate are simple: 

Put the plate in the bottom of your kitchen sink, fill the sink with boiling hot water, then add Calgon water softener. Rest the silver piece so that it's touching the plate, and leave it for a few minutes to fifteen minutes, then wipe clean.

However, I could no longer find Calgon (except for a ridiculous price on Amazon), so I began to do a bit of Google research.

There Are Many Ways, According to Articles on Google, on How to Clean Silver

Some articles involve dish soap and vinegar. However, I found the instructions on these methods to be too cumbersome.

I figured, if a silver plate with Calgon can clean silver, there has to be an equivalent DIY alternative method. Thanks to Google research, yes, there is.

Here's the Easiest and Best Way to Clean Silver

Items Needed:

  • Your kitchen sink
  • Baking Soda (several boxes depending on how much silver you have to clean). I'd pick three boxes, so you don't run out
  • Tinfoil
  • Boiling Hot Water

Directions:

1. Put the drain plug in your sink.

2. Line your entire sink with tin foil, shiny side up. Don't leave any sink exposed. Instead, bring the tin foil right up the sides of your sink all the way around. However, if you're only cleaning silverware and small pieces, you could try just lining the bottom of the sink.

3. Pour boiling water into the sink. I used mostly boiling water from the kettle, but I ran super hot tap water when the water needed more heat. However, just keep boiling water coming. I re-filled the kettle and boiled more water every time I emptied the kettle.

4. I filled the sink to the highest level because I had many silver pieces to clean, with some pieces being quite large.

5. Place a piece or pieces of silver in the sink touching the tin foil. For larger pieces, just rotate them so that all the sides get covered with water at some point. If the piece isn't in the water, it won't clean.

6. Pour baking soda into the sink. I poured it on top of the silver in the water, but I don't think that matters. Since I had a lot of silver to clean, I used several boxes of baking soda. On the first silver items, I probably dumped half a box in the water. I wanted to make sure it worked. Next, I cleaned a silver tea service, silver platters, silver candles, and a silver serving dish to clean. Judge for yourself how much baking soda you need. If you feel it's not cleaning fast enough, simply get the water up to boiling again, and add more baking soda.

7. The cleaning process takes care of itself. You don't have to scrub anything (just wipe it off when you take it out of the sink). In fact, it's interesting to watch the silver clean itself right before your eyes.

8. Dry, wipe and shine up your silver with a cloth. That's it, you're done.

9. I cleaned all these pieces in less than an hour. 

I prefer the above method because it uses everything I have in the house; a sink, hot water, tin foil, and baking soda - boom, that's it. Oh, and it's unbelievable how clean the silver turns out.


Here are the pieces I cleaned (and they were completely tarnished before):


This tea set was so tarnished it looked brassy-black. The tray was tricky to clean in the kitchen sink, but I managed to clean it simply by turning it around and around until all the areas were submerged.


The piece on the top left was also severely tarnished with dark black, as were the two serving dishes in the bottom middle.




Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”


Sunday, December 30, 2018

How to Clean Silver & Other Metals

An unexpected product that cleaned our silver
like nothing ever has!
For the past thirty-five years I've cleaned our silver using an electrolytic cleaning plate. I bought the plate in 1980's. It's a common and popular way to clean silver.

An electrolytic cleaning plate works with hot water and a water softener, Calgon. I've never used another water softener with it, only Calgon.

I wanted to clean the silver today and was out of Calgon, so thanks to google I tried baking soda and Borax with the cleaning plate. Neither worked very well. 

My husband, the car cleaning fanatic saw me struggle trying to clean the silver and jumped in and said, "I have a product that will clean that". When he demonstrated it, I was shocked at how amazing it worked!

Get this, he used Mothers Mag and Aluminum Polish for All Metals. He uses it to clean many items, including the rims on the car wheels. He swears by it.

The best way to explain this product is to show you via the photos featured below:

Our Silver Tea Set was Severely Tarnished
(The photo is blurry because it's cropped from a larger photo)

Unfortunately I hadn't cleaned our silver tea set all year. By the time the holidays rolled around, the tea set was a mess. As mentioned above, I used the electrolytic cleaning plate but it didn't work well because I was out of water softener. However, the electrolytic cleaning plate has NEVER cleaned the silver like this.

Here's Our Tea Set after Hubby Used 
Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish on it!

This is not an exaggeration, our set has never looked this clean! It looks almost new now. Hubby didn't just do this quickly though, he was thorough. Check out the photos below for the steps to follow.
He Used a Toothbrush to Clean the Pieces
Where Intricate Areas Need Detailed Attention

I had already attempted to clean the above piece using the electrolytic cleaning plate, but it just didn't come clean without Calgon. So again, hubby used Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish on it. He detailed it using a toothbrush.

Here's the finished result! 

I'm shocked at how amazing the Mag and Aluminum Polish works! Our silver hasn't looked this clean for years.

Here's a Close-up of our Polish
Step by Step How-to Instructions:
  1. Apply polish on the surface with a microfiber cloth
  2. For detailed hard to clean areas use a toothbrush
  3. With the toothbrush work the polish into all the crevices and tight spots
  4. You can put a cloth over the toothbrush to help get into the tight spots
  5. Let it dry for three or four minutes
  6. Then remove the polish with a microfiber cloth, keep using multiple cloths if they get too dirty
  7. Repeat until the product is cleaned
  8. When done, give it a final polish with the microfiber cloth
  9. The final step is to clean the silver with a little bit of dish soap and water. Give it a quick wipe down, then dry it. You don't need to submerge the pieces in water. Just dip the cloth in water, wipe the silver piece, then dry it thoroughly.
Note, my husband cleaned our silver tea set and five other pieces in just over two hours.

If I had to choose between an Electrolytic Cleaning Plate and the Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish, it's the Mag and Aluminum Polish all the way!



Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”


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