posted 02-13-2015 02:23 PM            

What I noticed is toothpaste did not remove a warm yellow/orange color from my old pieces. At the same time Weiman made them to shine as they just arrived from factory. Similar the polishing cloth seem to remove all this color.

I read a lot of articles on patina and tarnish. Even after that I really don't have much clue how to identify them.

May I ask you to explain, preferably with a photo, how patina looks like? What is the way to polish the silver without destroying patina?

posted 02-13-2015 09:55 PM            

Silver polishing cloths are a good choice, as would big name brand silver polishing paste or liquid. When using a paste or liquid be sure to use a clean, white, 100 percent cotton cloth that has been laundered many times so that it is very, very soft. Then do not bear down when polishing as you do not want to wear away the surface layer of the silver.

Please never use any kind of silver dip as most of those contain a chemical (thiourea) that is linked to causing cancer, and they remove all of the patina which make silver look horrible.

posted 02-15-2015 04:46 PM            

Silver reacts quickly and easily with sulfur and sulfur compounds and this causes tarnish. This is the part of the surface coating that most people like removed without destroying the good patina. The good patina does not seem to be removed with polishing creams such as Wright's Silver Cream or similar products.

In the real world sometimes one finds an old silver object that just does not respond to the cream type silver polish. I have on those occasions used a product like Wendol to polish the item - rubbing as gently as possible to remove the tarnish. I suspect that this method may remove some of the good patina, but the finished product has always looked good to me and if careful does not result in something that looks like it was buffed.

Buying something that is tarnished can be problematic as tarnish can hide real defects, but sometimes it can hide a real treasure. My wife has a much better eye than me (she also is not into polishing as that is my job) and brought a pair of candelabra that were black from tarnish. She said these were much better than the ones we had and for the price it was worth taking a chance. After much work I was glad she did as they were Old Sheffield plate by Matthew Boulton. They still have the blue tinge of color so characteristic of Old Sheffield Plate so using a little extra polishing did not harm the finish.

I am not a chemist, but I suspect it is possible to cause silver to react with oxygen with heat and some catalyst and mimic a finish that normally takes centuries to create. The harder part of creating an old finish would probably be creating the wear pattern caused by normal use.

I don't know if the above is any help, but one thing you can do to see patina is to visit a silver dealer’s shop and ask them to show you some old silver. You can compare it on the spot with something that they have that is new. The more you handle silver the more you will enjoy old silver.

posted 02-17-2015 10:30 PM            

Having said this patina is used often these days for silver. Where it can be ok is in talking about the fine layer of surface scratches and dents on an old piece of silver. Not about the tarnish, that yellow to brown to black that is on old unpolished silver.

There is one more element in the mix when talking about silver, that is fire stain, fire scale or copper oxide. On old hand made silver or more recent hand made (as in Arts and Craft) it is there from the day it's made. You can not creat it by chemically treating the silver. The only way to get it out is to polish it out and the only way to put it in is by heating up the silver to red hot and pickling it in acid 3 or 4 times, something that is done in the process of making most silver. There are old and new pieces where the fire scale is removed after the making or covered up (Jensen silverplate over all their hand hammered work) or most difficult, it is kept out during the making. There are two ways, cover the work in a coating that keeps oxygen from it when it is heated or put it in an oxygen free kiln when heating.

Fire scale shows it self as a lovely warm blue on old silver that has it. But most English and American Victorian silver made by the large firms does not have it. So Colonial and hand made have it but Gorham and Tiffany do not.

They all get a surface that is made up of scratches and if it has fire scale the two form a surface that is almost impossible to fake and once removed from an old thing it will never look the same. That is why machine polishing is bad and over polishing in general the same.