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Recovered item cleaning

R

relic-hunter

New member
Ultrasonic versus a tumbler. Probably been covered here before but a quick search didn't yield the answer I was looking for. So lets say that I have coins (probably mostly clad, some I can't tell that is how bad they are) and a couple of pieces of jewelry that need to be cleaned up. They seem to cost about the same for a low cost model anyway. Which is more versatile? Coins don't take long to get really encrusted in the sand of a saltwater beach. Any opinions are welcome.

Ken
 
The tumbler will take care of the clad easily and fairly quickly, especially since it can do 100's at once. The ultrasonic can do a better job on jewelry, especially any filigree and hard to reach places. Never tumble silver or gold. If it's a choice, then I would do the tumbler and hand clean any jewelry that you may find. They also have cheapy jewelry liquids that you can dip your finds in. Any jewelry shop has them. Hope this helps.
 
Harbor Freight has one for about $30. It works fine. I have tumbled many a coin with mine. Tumble pennies alone. Quarters, dimes, nickels together. Get some fish tank rocks from Wal-mart. A 5?pound bag about $3 will last a long time. Fill the barrow about 1/3 with rocks and about 100 to 150 coins. Don't over load. I put one ounce of liquid soap and one ounce of vinegar (have only done it with pennies it works great it only takes about 2 hours)
Fill with water up just past coins. Tumble for a few hours. Take out and pour it into a strainer and pick out coins. You can use rocks to tumble again.
I use the ultrasonic to clean jewelry. It is any good for cleaning coins. You can get a cheap one from Wal-mart or E-bay.
Hope this helps......Z
 
Use ultrasonic on coins that may prove to be valuable (silver, copper, gold ya right") first. Next see what you got. If you need further work, toss some rice hulls and a little Brasso (grocery store) in the tumbler and go for it. I've tumbled many a cartridge this way but...be aware, you will get a little surface degredation, because are polishing them. Gud luck!
 
I agree 100% with you as I find for clad and new pennies the best way to clean them is with a tumbler. I use aquarium gravel, water and real lemon juice and seperate my clad from the copper. The copper comes out great and looks as good as new. The clad I find is harder to clean so after my hour to hour and a half tumbleing I will take them out and pick out the good ones and those that are not I will tumble a little longer and use the gravel, water and put a little muratic acid and tumble again for a hour and rinse them off rght away and most will look great, but will put them back in the tumbler and use lemon juice in water again to make sure all the acid is off the clad.
On jewlery I will use my Ultra sonic as it works good for that, but for clad coins it dont work at all for me.
I will also tumble any copper or brass items i can fit in the rock tumbler and they too come out great looking.
Here is a couple of picture of the clad and copper after cleaning with just the lemon juice before I tried the the muratic acid which made the clad even nicer.
[attachment 106574 pennies.jpg]
[attachment 106573 clad2.jpg]
 
Well those look fine. I don't want them to look like they just came from the mint, but I don't want to coinstar machine to spit them back out at me! The last batch I cashed in was about $80 but the machine only took about $56 and now matter how many times I tried to put the rejects back in the machine kept spitting them back out at me. So clearly they needed to be cleaned up a bit. From those pics it looks like a tumbler does a pretty good job at cleaning them up. Thanks for the feedback.

Ken
 
As I clean them I will take out the bent ones and the zinc pennies that are real bad shape. Some of the bent quarters and dimes i can straighten out with 2 blocks of wood and a hammer. I put the coin between the blocks of wood and hammer on the wood right above the coins so they get straightened out. When I take them to the bank and they run them though their coins counter the only ones not accepted if there are any Canadian coins in the bunch, so I now use a strong magnet and run though the clad as it will pick out my Canadian clad coins. Last ones I took in all were accepted and non rejected.
 
Here's a cool idea! Take the bent and otherwise un-spendable ones with you next time, detecting. When you dig up a coin, toss a few of these back in the hole, for some lucky guy to find. Hell yes! :twodetecting::twodetecting::twodetecting:
 
Boy Rick I'm happy with my 1100.00 dollars so far this season the nice thing we have are 1.00 & 2.00 coins I use the magnet trick to see if there's any silver in the pile.
Often wonder how much Canadian clad you guy's pick up. Did you know that since 2000 we use iron core in our clad Sov & excal won't see it.
I tumble all clad and use the ultrasonic for jewelry the time factor alone cleaning would just be to long putting clad in the ultrasonic. Dan
 
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