polishing, identifying, storing silver

There is more in polishing than ultrafine sandpapering: only by burnishing can one achieve a mirror polish, and yet, no atom is removed. Look after "Beilby layer" with google.

J.J.

Thanks I will do that later tonight. I am hoping that not one single atom of silver is lost in the process of getting the brightest shine.

Actually I am working on a scheme of what I call New AGE silverware. Noone wants to waste time on cleaning silverware and that is where Stainless Steel has taken over.

So the New Age Silverware I envision is where I discover the proper formula of Stainless Silver. Where I add say platinum to silver so that it never tarnishes just as stainless steel never tarnishes. Now perhaps it is Chromium added to silver that would be a New Age Stainless Silverware.

This product when done will rival stainless steel in tarnish free and never have to polish. But it will have the highest allowable percentage of silver content. What that content will be I do not know. In stainless steel just 8% chrome creates its stainless quality.

If I am lucky then perhaps silver alloyed with chrome in a ratio of 2/3 silver to 1/3 chrome may yield this Stainless Silver.

The gist of this project is that people have written off silver in flatware and have failed to think that silver can be alloyed to match stainless steel in tarnish free.

So I am not writing off silver for silverware, but rather recognizing that chemists and engineers have failed to come forth with a new alloy of silver that rivals stainlesssteel in non tarnishing but still have a high content of silver.

And there is the added benefit that silver is a microbe killer of bacteria etc that steel is not.

Question: I notice on new stainless steel it is so bright and polished but after time it is a dull gray. So I wonder if that surface layer ends up in my stomach and whether chrome is good for animals in doses from flatware.

Question: I know that silverware is first put in a hot soap water wash in order to take off tarnish and then some silver polish is applied for the large black spots. But I wonder if there is a solution where you dump your silverware and overnight it comes out shining sparkling clean and not one atom of silver is lost!!!

Jacques, a question, I wonder about the Archimedes of ancient Syracuse with the "alleged" mirrors of war to burn Roman ships. Syracuse would have had ample silver for those mirrors. The question I have Jacques is what would the ancients have used to polish silver, or would they have literally fine sandpapered the silver.

Archimedes Plutonium

I'm trying to get a laptop in time for church camp summer job. Please help if you can by using my referal link:

Thanks in advance.

I have had a chance to look into Beilby layer. One site defines it as: "a film which forms on the surface of a metal by plastic flow when a metal is polished"

Sounds suspicious to me that not one atom of silver is lost due to a film formation. The chemistry of Beilby layer sounds as though it is a subject of details for a few experts. And for someone not familar with Beilby layer has a hard time of understanding it.

I wonder if there is a simple explanation of why copper silver and gold in the same family (1B) with copper at 29 electrons, silver at 47 electrons and gold with 79 electrons and that copper tarnishes quickly, silver tarnishes but more slowly and gold does not tarnish at all. What is the chemical explanation as to why copper and silver tarnish but gold escapes tarnish.

Archimedes Plutonium

There might be something in that.

It doesn't take long to darken into a bluish-grey if you eat boiled egg with a stainless steel spoon. About 4 minutes does it for me, using cheap stainless steel cutlery. I don't know what the chemical reaction would be.

When testing for silver, how many minutes when placing a item in a hot water bathe with egg yolk, if it has silver does it turn black? If it is nickel it stays unchanged. How many minutes?

Perhaps this is the better method of silver testing than nitric acid for nickel turns green and you lose some atoms of silver in the process.

I still need to confirm how to clean silver without losing one atom of silver in the process.

In the boiling water, baking soda as the acid and salt and aluminum foil method of cleaning silver, I am afraid that I lose atoms of silver (not yet confirmed).

Archimedes Plutonium

If I start eating a boiled egg with a silver spoon the spoon has darkened within less than a minute of first use.

Yes, thanks John, for I ended up spending more time in the lab tonight than expected for I wanted to edit more of my website tonight.

I got out a flask to boil water and I got 2 egg yolks and got some sterling silverware, some coin silverware, and some nickel flatware. And for silverware polish to clean up afterwards I used toothpaste.

I waited for the flask to get good and hot where the yolks became solid and found the coin silver to instantly turn black at the edges. But I found the sterling silver to tarnish but not so that it is noticeable. So they must have alloyed sterling silver with something that is less prone to tarnish.

I am concluding that the easiest way to know if silver or not is how it cleans up. Silver always tarnishes black and let standing will become a blackish hue. So I really do not need to test an item questionably silver by trying to blacken it, rather instead the test is whether a polish will take off some blackness. Left standing, nickel does not blacken, but silver does.

I want to recognize silver by just a glanze and if puzzled have a simple test. I think that test is a polish such as toothpaste.

I know silver has the highest reflectivity of light. But I wonder is nickel has the second highest reflectivity.

Silver is the "most white" of metals and if a color is assigned to the metals silver would be the base white and the other metals that look like silver would have some "gray" added. But I wonder if nickel is the closest to silver in color. Nickel seems to have a tinge of yellowish. I remember platinum and palladium and they seem to have a tinge of gray.

So, now, I wonder whether I can use some logical inferences to get me closer to a Silver Alloy that does not tarnish and is stainless just like stainless steel.

Theoretically I wonder if the alloy of stainless steel is equivalent, molecularly, to gold as a molecule. Gold is tarnish free. Stainless steel is tarnish free. So the compound of gold atoms is equivalent to the compound of stainless steel of its iron and chromium atoms.

So can one say that the mixture of iron and chrome to compose stainless steel is of the Equivalent Metallic Bond of gold, in that both have the same characteristic of tarnish free and stainless?

So if we put up an equation of gold flatware on one side and on the other side the iron-chrome alloy such as 18/10 stainless steel, then we have an equation of equality of gold to stainless-steel. An equation based on the Metallic Bond which allows gold atoms to be stainless and allows iron-chrome atoms to be stainless.

Why do all of this equation? Answer is easy. I want a Silver alloy that is as stainless and tarnish free as stainless steel or gold.

So if I can pull out this Equation, it would go far in answering what element to alloy to silver in order to get it as stainless. Iron is 26 and chromium is 24, or 2 to the left of iron. And silver is 47 and 2 to the left of silver is Rh, rhodium at 45. So the question is, if I alloy silver with rhodium do I get a tarnish free silverware??

I think I am on the correct path by equating gold to stainless steel by saying the metallic bond becomes equal. And thence from using that information as to find the silver alloy that matches the tarnish free qualities of both gold and stainless steel.

Now I know that stainless steel has 3 or more elements in alloy and not just iron and chromium. So it is probable that the very best silver non tarnish alloy has a mix of 3 or more elements.

Archimedes Plutonium