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Silver Care
With today's anti-tarnishing processes, as well as simple cleaning techniques, caring for your silver is easier than ever. With proper care, your fine quality silver will last a lifetime. To minimise scratches and other damage, store your silver jewellery either in a cloth pouch or in a separate compartment in your jewellery box. Avoid exposing your silver to household cleaners, bleach or ammonia, or swimming in chlorinated water, as the chemicals can damage. Care should also be taken to prevent silver tarnish, a dulling that naturally occurs when silver reacts with sulphur or hydrogen sulphide in the ambient air. To clean your silver, use polishes specific to removing tarnish. It is most easily removed when it first becomes visible. Although wearing your silver jewellery often is the best way to prevent tarnish from building up, regular cleanings will prevent tarnish and keep your silver bright and sparkling. Never use silver dip, as it is detrimental to your jewellery in the long term.
Here are a few tips on maintaining your silver jewellery in top condition:
- Never dip any silver jewellery in cleaning solution, even if the manufacturer advertises that it was made for silver jewellery!! "Dip" cleaners/solutions will work okay for the first few times, but after that there seems to be some weird chemical change and the metal gets funny marks on it that are hard to remove. Also, any porous or organic stones (like turquoise, lapis, malachite, coral, pearls, amber etc.) will be damaged forever. Commercial cleaners actually leave pits and holes in your stones.
- Never clean silver jewellery with toothpaste and a toothbrush…no matter how "soft" the brush is - you WILL scratch the silver!
- The one and ONLY way to clean silver jewellery is with a professional cloth. The cloth is treated with cleaning chemicals and not only will the cloth last for a long time, but it will give you an amazing shine each and every time.
- If your jewellery is really dirty or has minor scratches you can use a general metal cleaner in a paste form, which can be found in some supermarkets and hardware stores…just follow the manufacturer's instructions.
- Sand blasted or Satin finished jewellery, which is not plated, will oxidize extremely fast and you'll find it doesn't clean very well by normal means. These products can be cleaned with a pencil eraserÉyes, a rubber! Just make sure the eraser is SOFT. After cleaning, the item should be fine and require no extra steps, so don't go over it with a cloth or paste.
About Tarnish:
Tarnish is caused by the interaction of the alloys used to strengthen the metal with various chemicals in the air or from direct human contact. Some people have acid skin and silver will darken or have a funny chemical reaction no matter what they do. Those people can try painting the inside of the ring or the backside of the jewellery with a coat of clear nail polish, which can be removed and renewed as needed. This is good for allergies, too.
Silver Buying Guide
Silver can achieve the most brilliant polish of any metal. To make silver durable for jewellery, pure silver is alloyed with small amounts of copper. In many countries, Sterling Silver (92.5% silver, 7.5% copper) is standard. The copper toughens the silver and makes it possible to use for jewellery. Although any metal can make up the 7.5% non-silver portion of sterling, copper is the best companion, improving the hardness and durability without affecting colour. The small amount of copper added to sterling has little effect on the metal's value. Instead, the price of silver jewellery is affected by the labour involved and the intricacy of the design.
To be assured you're buying quality, look for the stamp, '925'. Acceptable hallmarks for sterling silver are:
- sterling
- sterling silver
- stg
- 925
Most quality silver items are stamped with a 'fineness' mark, but not all. Sometimes a particular jewellery design has no allowance for a hallmark.
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