Hello all, thanks for a great forum!
Im pretty new to the world of refining and precious metals so please bear with me. Hopefully Im posting this in the right forum.
A friend of mine gave me these gold plated silver beads. She said she did the gold plating herself with 24K (she does jewelry, mostly as a hobby) and the beads were 999 silver (this I know to be a fact since I buy from the same source). It was some kind of left over stuff from her "playing around". The gold plating seemed only half way done and there was a lot of tarnish, mostly black and purplish stains. I guess it was kind of old. Pretty weird looking!
Soo, I figured I would use the "aluminum in the pot" tarnish removal method that I have done before with great success for "regularly" tarnished silver (--> http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/homeexpts/tarnish.html) Only with a slight variation: Instead of baking soda I use plain salt. Well, after doing this I was kind of shocked to see that not only did all the discolorations go off but the gold plating too! :shock: I actually wanted to keep that!
Is this normal? Why would the gold move to the aluminum too? Maybe because the silver wasnt fully coated with it? You can clearly see a golden coloration on the aluminum foil now. How can I retrieve that?
Or is it possible that this wasnt even gold? Just some golden colored silver sulfide? Is there such a thing? Im really baffled and Im not sure if my friend has pulled a fast one on me. Or maybe a challenge (we do that between each other )...? Before I talk to her I would like to get some experts opinions...thanks a lot!
Im pretty new to the world of refining and precious metals so please bear with me. Hopefully Im posting this in the right forum.
A friend of mine gave me these gold plated silver beads. She said she did the gold plating herself with 24K (she does jewelry, mostly as a hobby) and the beads were 999 silver (this I know to be a fact since I buy from the same source). It was some kind of left over stuff from her "playing around". The gold plating seemed only half way done and there was a lot of tarnish, mostly black and purplish stains. I guess it was kind of old. Pretty weird looking!
Soo, I figured I would use the "aluminum in the pot" tarnish removal method that I have done before with great success for "regularly" tarnished silver (--> http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/homeexpts/tarnish.html) Only with a slight variation: Instead of baking soda I use plain salt. Well, after doing this I was kind of shocked to see that not only did all the discolorations go off but the gold plating too! :shock: I actually wanted to keep that!
Is this normal? Why would the gold move to the aluminum too? Maybe because the silver wasnt fully coated with it? You can clearly see a golden coloration on the aluminum foil now. How can I retrieve that?
Or is it possible that this wasnt even gold? Just some golden colored silver sulfide? Is there such a thing? Im really baffled and Im not sure if my friend has pulled a fast one on me. Or maybe a challenge (we do that between each other )...? Before I talk to her I would like to get some experts opinions...thanks a lot!