Before and After

[metalmiester]

Hi all I went dumster diving at work today and found some wall wart charger's and decided to make a coin cleaner for my Lake Loot(term coined by Gulf Hunter) The charger's were 5.9 volts. I don't know what the correct voltage should be but it worked just fine. The coins came out a little pitted but I'm not sure if that was caused by the lake water or the elactralacis. Any feed back? I finished off the coins with a soft scrub sponge pad, toothpaste and baking soda.

 

[Gulf Hunter]

Just bought a tumbler and waiting for the coffee can to fill all the way up before I clean 'em up. I wonder how they would look if you just tumbled them? Probably would not hurt the value too much, cuz they're thrashed from being lake loot!

 

[Goldringer]

n/t

 

[Rick(ND)]

Next time try aquarium gravel and water with some real lemon juice (brand name Real Lemon) and tumble the pennies for about a hour and they will shine like new. Clad coins you do separate and it take them a hour to 3 hours total. Sometimes i will tumble for a hour and drain them off and take out the ones that are good and put clean water and lemon juice, tumble for a hour again and unplug the tumbler and leave over night to soak, the plug in for another hour and drain them off. Works real good and some look real shiny and smooth feeling.
Never tumble real silver unless you just want to cleanit up a bit, then I use no gravel and just real lemon juice for 10 minnutes.
Here is some of the clad I did, the lighting is not great so they do look better that they look in the picture, but some do have a slight pink tint to them.
[attachment 30109 cleaned.jpg]

Here is some of the pennies I did

[attachment 30110 cleaned2.jpg]

 

[Rick(ND)]

I have a unit that is adjustable, so I can vary mine a bit. I also tried a 9 volt battery to make a portable one, but that one did pit the coins.
Now on my regulated one i have been running it on 10 which is wide open and while it was running I measured the voltage and was getting 8 volts, but without it connected it puts out 14 volts. Now I checked the amps and with it working full it is running 400 Milli amps, turn it down and it is running less than 10 Milli amps. Now if you have a way of checking yours i would as it does look like the amps were too high that pitted the coins or were left in too long. What I have been doing with the common silver like you have that has been in water too long and crude up is run it in my unit for 10 minutes or so on high then take it out and use cigarette ashes, or ashes from my wood burning stove and rub that on the coins with my fingers like I am polishing it, then wash it in water as it will clean off all the black and crud the electrolysis loosened up.
If you go over to the Explorer forum you will see some silver coins I cleaned up for James ND last week. Here is the link to the post http://www.findmall.com/read.php?19,358574,358574#msg-358574

 

[Gary in Daytona]

Virtually every black silver coin I got after the storms of 04 were pitted to some degree, and I found hundreds. I cleaning them in a variety of ways, including a tumbler, but they were still pitted when they come out. Consider it the price you pay for getting silver that's been in water for a long time. Still worth it's weight in silver.
Here's a shot of my "before" pile. At this point, I had cleaned a few but wasn't happy with my results either.
.
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[Doug[Manila]]

Cleaning silver without losing the silver!
http://www.darylscience.com/Demos/Silver.html

 

[Gary in Daytona]

but I didn't think of it when I had the coins to clean. I have a few I haven't cleaned yet, I think I'll try this method for the heck of it. Couldn't do any harm if the coins are already damaged, which I think they are. Thanks Doug.