Decided to go low tech and low cost with my finds cleaning.:wiggle:

[bdahunter]

An artist was selling her gently used tumbler on the local exchange network, e-moo.com so I called her up and found myself a very good deal. She sold me the whole package for $40 which included the tumbler with rubber drum and all of the various grits (course thru polish). Landed on the island it cost her $120 which is about right so it was a very good deal for me. The special grits allow me to clean the finds without damaging them.
[attachment 35519 P9170015.JPG]

Note that even the medium grit is only a very fine powder.
[attachment 35520 P9170016.JPG]

I've tried electolysis in the past and it works okay on some find but tends to cook others, especially silver which has been badly corroded by the ocean. Here's what a mercury dime looks like after careful electrolysis using a 400mAh transformer.

[attachment 35521 P9170009.JPG]

Not pretty is it!

The tumbler does a much better job and I can rinse the muck out of the aggregate after I am done so it is good as new for the next batch of tumbling.

Cheers,

BDA

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

Man, my results with electrolysis on silver have been FAR better. That looks more like a BEFORE shot to me.

Before...
[attachment 35532 8_6_2005d.jpg]

After...
[attachment 35533 8_6_2005e.jpg]

Before...
[attachment 35534 isabel8Small.jpg]

After...
[attachment 35535 isabel9Small.jpg]

Before...and it doesn't get much worse than THIS!
[attachment 35536 true1.jpg]

After...
[attachment 35537 true3.jpg]

 

[Craig-PI]

BDA

Use aquarium gravel, I use it on my clad, silver and rings, I threw away the grit that came with mine...

 

[Anonymous]

Mike, take your Barber dime, for instance, and BDA's Merc. Both look like they've been in saltwater for decades. Silver gets eaten up pretty bad like that. Most of the jewelry, and the newer silver coins, probably weren't in the water that long. When the electrolysid converts the corrosion, it leaves behind pitted silver on the old stuff, while the newer stuff comes out fairly good, since it hasn't been in the water that long.

I've found a couple OLD silver rings, probably from the 40's, in the water, that looked like crap coming out of the water. Heck, one of them I wasn't even sure was silver until I started cooking it in my electrolysis tank. Once I got them cleaned, and polished, they were still pretty rough.

 

[bdahunter]

I've tried the electrolysis cleaning technique every which way and the results are never very good, though admittedly better on the lightly tarnished finds like the ones you show in your post above.
The heavy encrustation that I show on the threepence in this weekend's post is fairly typical of the finds here.
The salinity is quite a bit higher here because of the surrounding reef and the high salinity of the Sargasso Sea to the south. Take high salinity and higher average water temperatures and you get increased corrosion on your finds and more break down of the material composing the find. Remember that the build up around a find is composed of the surrounding material and the material that was in the metal find which has been change by the chemical reaction with the salt water. (corrosion is an endothermic reaction, so this is where the warmer water becomes an important factor)
Therefore, in most cases, I prefer light tumbling to electrolysis. Regardless of which cleaning technique I use, the silver finds always require a good buffing to bring them to a nice shine again and I hadn't done that to those rings prior to posting.

Keep doing what works, Right

Cheers,

BDA

 

[Gulf Hunter]

1/3 of a bar of Ivory soap (cheese graded), a tablespoon of course sand. Bermuda sand should work fine. Add water to just cover the top of the coins. 4-5 hours should be enough to cherry those coins. When you dump the smeg out, do it outside. The Princess will not like what you pour out in the kitchen sink. I never tumble jewelry, but use my new ultrasonic. That's a fine unit too. OBTW, tumble coppers separate from silvers, unless you want yer silvers pink, as it were. GH

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

Surely there are some things it doesn't work very well on. I've had great luck with most of my stuff that needed it. I usually cook it for a few minutes, rinse it under warm water with some dishwashing liquid, cook it some more as required, and then polish it up with Nevr-Dull.

http://www.amerimark.com/cgi-bin/amerimark/cat_item.html?prod=22120&media=G62765&days=XVQ

 

[Mike (Virginia Beach)]

Yeah, that is some salty water out there. Do what works = The Ticket!

 

[Craig-PI]

GH,

Here is a picture of the jewelry I tumbled with the aquarium gravel, as you will see it does no harm to the jewelry and I think it comes out fine. These pieces were black and I tumbled for 90 minutes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v634/Cfmct/P3110432.jpg

I don't bother with most silver coins because they turn to silver sulfide and if I tumbled them I would have just pieces of the coins left lol...

 

[bdahunter]

My tumbler was second hand and didn't come with instructions. I was tumbling my clad the same way I used to tumble stones when I was rock hounding (4 to 8 hours). WAY 2 Much!
I'll see if I can get my hands on some aquarium gravel and try that for a much shorter time.
Thanks for the great tip!

BDA