How do you folks clean your copper?

[DELETED USER (Emmitt)]

Hi gang. Just wondering how some of you clean your copper IH's etc.. I very seldom find a good penny/ copper in the ground. They always come out with loads of commodity meat on them! LOL. I soak them in olive oil usually for 3-6 months and that works on some of the crust. Any and all suggestions will help me to clean them up further! Thanks in adavnce..Happy Hunting and Happy Thanksgiving..Emmett

 

[mapper65]

On something that I'm going to clean up to keep I'll use a brass brush. Please see the link to my previous post below to see how much of a difference a brass brush can make. Be careful about buying the brass brush from Harbor Freight. The bristles come out and you'll find them everywhere. I'd be afraid to use one of their brushes anywhere near where you may have food or wash clothes. They make some regular coin brushes that you can find on eBay or at a coin shop that have really tight bristles and they don't seem to fall out as easily.

Usually in January I'll use a Harbor Freight dual tumbler and load copper in one tumbler and clad in the other tumbler. It takes about 12-14 hours per load of coins but the coins for the most part look as good as many that you see in circulation. There are lots of helpful hints online about tumbling coins but I will say it's trail & error.

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[salway67]

I have been told that you use Elmer school glue put a layer of glue all over the Item you want to want clean and let it dry and peel the dry glue off .

 

[Glovas]

My method is a little harsher I throw them in a rock tumbler. after all there just penny's

 

[mapper65]

Hi guys, I just remembered that I had taken some before and after pictures of one of the batches of last year's coins that I cleaned up in my Harbor Freight dual tumbler. I separate all of the pennies from the other coins first so that when I tumble the coins I'll put pennies in one tumbler and quarters, nickels and dimes in the other tumbler. I fill each empty tumbler halfway full with fine white aquarium gravel that I bought at Petco. Then I measure out a full glass of coins using one of those cheap throwaway clear plastic drink glasses kind of like they serve cocktails in at an event. The type that are narrow at the bottom and get wider at the top and are probably only 3" high or so. After that I put in a tablespoon of Dawn and then fill up the tumbler with water just until the water level is even with the top of the coins.

I tumble them for 12 hours. About 6 hours into the process I open up each tumbler and dump the contents into a strainer. I rinse out the tumbler and rinse the coins in the strainer until the gravel and coins are rinsed off very well. I dump the coins and gravel back into the tumbler. Once that's done I fill the tumbler with water again, just until the water level covers the contents in the tumbler and add a tablespoon of dawn. I let them tumble for another 6 hours, you can let them go longer if you would like but haven't found that it makes them that much cleaner. When I'm done tumbling, I dump the tumbler into a wire strainer and run that under tap water over everything until it the water starts running clear out of the bottom of the strainer.

Now for the fun part......picking the coins out of the aquarium gravel. I bought some cookie sheets and I quickly squeeze each coin in a towel to get the bulk of the water off and lay each coin on the cookie sheets into one layer as best as I can. A few hours later the coins are pretty dry but it does help to move them around once of twice during the drying process just so they dry on bothe sides.

One of these days I'm going to make a little wooden box and cover the bottom with 1/4"x1/4" wire screen which will let the aquarium gravel fall through and the coins stay in the screen. It's really not that big of deal but something like that would save me some time.

All of this sounds like it's very time consuming but it's actually not a big deal. I find that 99% of the coins look good good enough to spend. I typically make a pile of the ratty coins and put a few ratty ones into each roll while I'm rolling them. For those bent coins I give them a whack or two with a hammer on the anvil part of my vise and they end up nice and flat.

 

[Mtnmn]

What I use in place of dish detergent is "automatic dish washer gel" because there is no foaming action from the gel and it also seems to clean slightly better. Another way to save time is once the pennies are on the cookie sheet, rather than letting them dry on it, stick the cookie sheet in an already heated oven for a short amount of time. The pennies will be dry in a minute or two. Using 1/4" wire mesh to make yourself a home-made sifter sounds like an excellent idea. About all you would need is a 4 foot piece of a 2"x 2" board, cut into 4 one foot sections, nailed together at the corners and the 1/4" wire mesh fastened to the bottom side. Tractor Supply sells the mesh and any lumber supply place will have the wooden two by two's. Thanks for the idea... Just read where one guy claimed his coins cleaned up twice as fast without using any kind of liquid cleaner. At the moment I'm trying steel shot as a tumbling media, heard that it works best of all on clad.

 

[no-cents]

Mapper65 wrote-"One of these days I'm going to make a little wooden box and cover the bottom with 1/4"x1/4" wire screen which will let the aquarium gravel fall through and the coins stay in the screen. It's really not that big of deal but something like that would save me some time."


What I do now is just use my beach scoop. The coins stay in the scopp and the gravel falls out onto an old towel. I then put the gravel back into the tumbler and lay the coins out to dry on the same towel. Works for me.

 

[mapper65]

Ah! Never considered that. Ironically my sand scoop is stored about 10' from where I clean my coins. Thanks for the great suggestion.