Polishing silver?

Silver_Dealar

Silver_Dealar

Member
I know how to remove tarnish from silver bars, but is there a polish anyone can recommend for bullion? I'm being quite cautious with this as I haven't done it before and I do t want to affect the value of the bullion by removing any silver, so I thought I'd put this question to the community. I want my PM 10oz Bars nice and SHINY!! :) Thanks!

Silver
 
impossible to not remove silver by mechanical polishing methods, chemical cleaning depending on what you use will also remove a molecular layer of metal, although chemicals will clean they will not polish, I have pretty much done every method you can think of in my career, best is to just accept them as they are and don't touch them, if you must, use a FINE polish, eg car (not compound), jewellers white metal polish, autosol, ultra fine grade Alumina Oxide and water, ALL of these are abrasive and WILL remove metal although microscopic in amount unless you go bat shit crazy ass monkey mental with a buff wheel. Not really a practice I would bother with, or suggest. If you are talking scratched bars as in deep marks, just leave them be, sell them and buy minted bars or high quality new cast that have not been subject to years of handling, I only ever clean silver now before my refining process.
 
Cloudy ammonia and baking powder R worked a charm for my Shoe Bar

Z1ulmeN.jpg


http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-648772.html#p648772
 
The pour lines are very fine on this bar so the mold was hot and the metal very fluid(hot) as well and poured quick at an even rate, possibilities are: being the pour point, this is where some flux remains may have been removed by acid pickle bath after pouring or another possible is metal crystalizing/freezing/porosity as this looks like the area of the last metal poured. None of my PM cast Kilo bars in past have exhibited this feature as pictured, freezing around the edges and bottom but nothing that looks like that in the bar centre. Another possibility is contact with cold tooling or a heat conductor while the metal was cooling from liquid to solid state.
 
Milk spotting has a specific other cause.
This is just 'tarnishing', being silver reacting with sulphur containing compounds in the air.
First it shows a brown color, later on it becomes black.
Silver atoms can relocate, causing the shape of the object to detoriate. This is irreversible.
It can still be hard to notice though so it's after chemical cleaning (soda, alu) still looking ok.
Nevertheless, when a surface got 'expanded' due to reaction / assimilation of other elements, the exposed surface gets bigger, and the re-tarnishing process may proceed faster than before with a more flat surface.
At some point a good look may require melt and recasting.
 
Topherclaus said:
House said:
Cloudy ammonia and baking powder R worked a charm for my Shoe Bar

http://i.imgur.com/Z1ulmeN.jpg

http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-648772.html#p648772
Click to expand...

I was unaware it could get this bad. Any word to the conditions it was stored under to end up so poor? Is that just an advanced for of milk spotting or something entirely different?
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Something entirely different. I think it may have been in an industrial freezer for a while and then being exposed to the Perth summer heat/shoe chemicals made it get funky.
 
Speaking of polishing... Does anyone have an idea of how much silver a silver cleaning solvent would remove from a bar if say dipped a couple times for around ten seconds... Any amount even worth worrying about? Would you notice any difference on a scale, to even the slightest degree?
 
Probably about 5/6th of a milligram. Unless you're dipping a 50kg bar it's not worth worrying about.
 
House said:
Probably about 5/6th of a milligram. Unless you're dipping a 50kg bar it's not worth worrying about.
Click to expand...



Thanks, I had dipped a few coins, 5 oz bar, and a 100 oz Engelhard that had some ugly tarnishing going on. I used the cleaner (e.z.est.) and noticed shiny little specks floating in the solvent, realized it was obviously silver. That's when it hit me that the solvent was so strong that it actually removed silver from the bullion. Usually good brands like Engelhard, sunshine, etc the bars and coins weigh a little on the heavy side anyways. As long as it's not done often and not too long, I too don't think it's much to worry about.
 
I have polished many silver coins and bars etc. And unless you are using sandpaper/emery paper or rough polich the difference is minimal.

TIP: If you have multiple items, weigh the PM and see how much you have leeway you have and start on the ones with biggest buffer. If you are doing 1 ounce coins and it weighs 31.105, best to leave it along until you are comfortable.

Chemical dips, negligibly difference, Id say no difference, unless you have tarnish "rust" falling off.

Hand polishing, minimal difference using toothbrush.

Motorised polishing. I use a dremel, you need to be careful as you can easily easily take off .5 gram with the wrong polish.
 
Get silvo from coles, bunnings wherever get ALOT of paper towel and rub the sh*it out of it. I did it to all my perth bars. They are like mirror finished. It takes our the dark weird pour marks and tiny scratches. Some i did over 3 years ago look like they were just done, Dont worry about it it they will be fine. As long as your not using sand paper to shine them up. They will be fine.
 
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