[Jewelry making - Article 01209] - Re: [Orchid] Sensitive Stones Cleaning

[Daniel Spirer]

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    I'm going to step out on a limb here, and I would like to preface it
    by telling everyone NOT to do what I recommend here unless you can
    afford to replace the stone you're cleaning. 

    I have never, in more than 20 years of cleaning stones in both an
    ultrasonic and a steamer ever had a stone be negatively impacted by
    the cleaning methods used.  I have put every fragile stone known to
    man in at some time or another and never had anything break, or be
    impacted by the cleaning methods (I can't say the same thing about
    applying heat to stones however--including stones like sapphire that
    are supposedly "heat resistant"). 

    I generally try to keep stones like emeralds and opals in the
    ultrasonic for a brief period of time (usually I hold the piece in
    with tweezers and swish it around a bit for less than a minute).  I
    also have used a steamer in a somewhat similar fashion by trying to
    direct the steam around the sides of the stone as opposed to coming
    down on the top of it. 

    I think the bigger problem with these cleaning methods is that people
    tend to (especially with the ultrasonic) dump stuff in and forget
    about it for 20 minutes by which time something could have actually
    happened to the stones. The other thing you can do is make the
    cleaning solution in the ultrasonic as strong as possible so that it
    cleans the piece relatively quickly. 

    I don't know what other people use but we use ammonia, ivory liquid
    and water.  If I need a piece to clean up quickly because I don't
    want to let it sit in the solution, I'll just add some extra ammonia
    so the cleaning action is sped up. However as I stated before I
    wouldn't ever do any of this to a stone I couldn't afford to replace
    and yes, I have worked with some customer's emeralds that were way
    out of my budget range, and I never did anything but use an ammonia,
    ivory liquid, water mixture with a soft brush. 

    If you brush the whole piece with the cleaning brush you can
    sometimes achieve a slightly softer look to the metal that isn't bad
    and then it doesn't look like a mistake because only part of the
    piece looks that way. 

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
daniel AT spirerjewelers.com
www.spirerjewelers.com

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