Kapi
Forum Supporter
When I'm finding old gold I sometimes will use muriatic acid on a q-tip to get the green junk off of the 10k gold rings. It's always worked great in the past but that was all on YELLOW gold.
I remove the green because when I last went to sell jewelry for scrap the guy said "Well this is all worth $900.00" I had not removed the green stuff but I had weighed everything and did my own calculations and it should have been $1,500 dollars! I'd already accounted for some of the stones weights and some of the green stuff. So I say to the guy "Sir you're not even in the ballpark. Why?" He said he guessed what the green stuff weighed. I asked if he had a way to take the stones all out and take the green stuff off and he did. After reweighing everything it turned out he was right at $1,500 where he should have been.
One of my hunts earlier in the year produced two gold rings. One likely a fresh drop and one clearly had been there a long time. Itsaring said "I wouldn't use that muriatic acid on that ring since it may affect the rhodium plating." I agreed!
I got out the electrolysis kit and put the ring in there awhile and then grabbed my spare toothbrush....
What I forgot was I'd cleaned the nugget ring with muriatic acid on a toothbrush a couple days earlier (That eats the bristles by the way).
After I rubbed the toothbrush a little in the grooves, the green stuff easily fell off but I noticed the ring started changing color a little bit to pinkish... OOPS! I'm not sure if that's fixable without having it Rhodium dipped again. The stones in it are pretty nice so I may just do that as this one fits too!
I'll take this to a jeweler friend too and see what he thinks. Maybe he knows some tricks to restore it. We tried polishing it with Mother's polish but it did nothing to fix the pink stains.
Anyway, two nice gold rings, a silver ring and silver chain made for a good day!
Gold Ring number 17 and 18 for 2017 so far.
I remove the green because when I last went to sell jewelry for scrap the guy said "Well this is all worth $900.00" I had not removed the green stuff but I had weighed everything and did my own calculations and it should have been $1,500 dollars! I'd already accounted for some of the stones weights and some of the green stuff. So I say to the guy "Sir you're not even in the ballpark. Why?" He said he guessed what the green stuff weighed. I asked if he had a way to take the stones all out and take the green stuff off and he did. After reweighing everything it turned out he was right at $1,500 where he should have been.
One of my hunts earlier in the year produced two gold rings. One likely a fresh drop and one clearly had been there a long time. Itsaring said "I wouldn't use that muriatic acid on that ring since it may affect the rhodium plating." I agreed!
I got out the electrolysis kit and put the ring in there awhile and then grabbed my spare toothbrush....
What I forgot was I'd cleaned the nugget ring with muriatic acid on a toothbrush a couple days earlier (That eats the bristles by the way).
After I rubbed the toothbrush a little in the grooves, the green stuff easily fell off but I noticed the ring started changing color a little bit to pinkish... OOPS! I'm not sure if that's fixable without having it Rhodium dipped again. The stones in it are pretty nice so I may just do that as this one fits too!
I'll take this to a jeweler friend too and see what he thinks. Maybe he knows some tricks to restore it. We tried polishing it with Mother's polish but it did nothing to fix the pink stains.
Anyway, two nice gold rings, a silver ring and silver chain made for a good day!
Gold Ring number 17 and 18 for 2017 so far.
Attachments
Last edited:
Places like Flagler were great for awhile for old stuff after hurricane Matthew.
Man that stuff is harsh! Makes you cough if you breathe it!
