How to clean silver naturally, even if it's really tarnished. The tarnish just melts away with this trick!
www.creeklinehouse.com
I’ve used this method with reasonable success.
The worst part is just the idea of dipping part of your pipe in hot water. The effectiveness is highly dependent on temperature so I make sure it’s as hot as I can possibly bare to put my hands in, and try as much as possible to only dip the band and nothing else, which may or may not even be possible depending on the pipe shape.
It does come out shiny though, and it’s totally non-destructive.
(Any amount of polishing technically is removing material and will with enough time result in the destruction of the piece, maybe that could be thousands of years with a very mild abrasive, regardless you can’t get around the fact that tarnish contains the original silver and removing it is making the piece smaller).
I’m amazed that there isn’t some sort of industrial paste sold with all the components for reversing tarnish.
More recently though I’ve settled on getting an even patina on my silver and then leave it be.
Just use some paper towel to lightly polish the silver every day to make sure it patinas evenly, you’re not trying to remove all the tarnish, just even it out. Eventually as it darkens it will need less and less attention, after a few months of polishing once a week it should be good to sit practically indefinitely.
The total opposite of reversing tarnish with aluminum is leaving your pipe in a tub with a hot chopped up hard boiled egg, it will turn dull grey within minutes. This can easily be an excessive amount of tarnish and on rubbing it down you might get a bit of material loss, but it’s a fast way to get a nice deep patina.
Just make sure you do not allow any of the egg yolk to touch the silver because egg has so much sulphur it will severely blacken the silver.
