Guys, you forgot the
most important thing, keep the brothers wife happy by making her jewellery sparkle again!!
Easiest way to untarnish silver (I use it on my silver all the time):
- Get a heatproof glass bowl
- Line with tin foil (aluminium foil) shiny side up
- Add 1 cup of baking soda per gallon of water used
- Pour over the boiling hot water and stir to dissolve soda
- Immediately place silver items in the water, making sure it touches the foil and is fully submerged
DONT use on silver that has embedded stones/gems as it may damage the setting
Why this works
When silver tarnishes, it combines with sulphur and forms silver sulfide. Silver sulfide is black. When a thin coating of silver sulfide forms on the surface of silver, it darkens the silver. The silver can be returned to its former luster by removing the silver sulfide coating from the surface by polishing and the other is to reverse the chemical reaction and turn silver sulfide back into silver.
The tarnish-removal method used above uses a chemical reaction to convert the silver sulfide back into silver. Many metals in addition to silver form compounds with sulphur. Some of them have a greater affinity for sulphur than silver does. Aluminum is such a metal. In this experiment, the silver sulfide reacts with aluminum. In the reaction, sulphur atoms are transferred from silver to aluminum, freeing the silver metal and forming aluminum sulfide. The reaction as a chemical equation.
3 Ag2S + 2 Al --/> 6 Ag + Al2S3
Silver sulphide + aluminium ---> Silver + aluminium sulphide
