[Jewelry making - Article 00766] - Re: [Orchid] Alum Pickle

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>      Does the alum pickle solution give the same fine silver plating
>     as sparex?  (The heat, pickle, heat, pickle thing that you do to
>     cover fire scale and prepare for reticluation?) 

    Yes.  But you should understand that the white matte silver surface
    is NOT plating.  Nothing is deposited on the surface by the pickle. 
    The only thing that happens is that the pickle dissolves the copper
    oxides.  That's all. In order to get that white surface, you have to
    oxidize the copper on the surface for the pickle to then dissolve. 
    When that happens, any polish on the surface is disrupted, and the
    result is that white matte surface.  Whether using alum or sparex, if
    you put a normally clean unheated piece of silver in the pickle, you
    can leave it there till you're blue in the face, but it won't turn
    matte white. Same thing if you've heated, annealed, soldered the
    silver, but with a good coat of prips flux on it to prevent
    oxidation.  If there's no black oxide of copper on the surface to be
    removed, then there's no resulting matte white surface after
    pickling. 

Peter


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