Surprisingly, it is not too difficult to use clean jewelry as the professional jewelers do it. A homemade jewelry cleaner for ultrasonic can be used if you know how to clean gold jewelry at home. Some jewelry cleaner Walmart and jewelry cleaner Amazon can also be used to get amazing results from just scrubbing your jewelry at home.
On the other hand, if you are interested in acquiring some of the special methods of professional jewelers, they perform extra steps to ensure that the jewelry is in top condition before being returned to the owners:
- Instead of hand-polishing jewelry, professional jewelers use a high-speed buffing wheel that has a special abrasive disc loaded onto it. The disc takes care of discoloration and other dings on the surface of the metal. It takes many years of experience to be able to carry out a good polish with a high-speed wheel, so be careful if you want to try this method.
- The next step is steam cleaning. Steam cleaning involves pumping hot steam onto the surface of a piece of jewelry, and this helps dislodge the most problematic stains and built-up grime in areas that the ultrasonic cleaner may not have reached.
The Steps
Professional jewelers use ultrasonic cleaning devices for cleaning authentic jewelry.
The first step is to buy a commercial solution or use a homemade jewelry cleaner for ultrasonic devices. Soak the jewelry for 10-20 minutes and allow the solution to work on the verdigris on the metals.
You can also agitate the basin to help loosen the dirt and grime. It is possible to adequately soak and “pre-clean” multiple pieces of jewelry at a time, as long as they are soaked completely in the solution.
Now, if you want to make your homemade jewelry cleaner for ultrasonic cleaning, here are the steps for that:
- Fill a shallow basin with two cups of distilled water or any filtered water so we can avoid the invisible minerals present in city tap water (as well as any chemical agents they add to make the water potable).
- Mix one teaspoon of ammonia to the water and stir gently. Let the smell of the ammonia dissipate first before proceeding to the next step.
- Select a mild dishwashing detergent to add two tablespoons of that to the mixture. Again, gently stir the solution until the new ingredient has been integrated well with the water and the ammonia.
- Your ultrasonic cleaner is now ready. Turn on the device for about 10 minutes (this is after pre-soaking the pieces of jewelry) and wait for the machine to finish its work.
Home cleaning tips
Don’t have an ultrasonic cleaner at home? No problem. A lot of people clean their jewelry without a machine, and they get good results, too. Ultrasonic cleaners are recommended for folks who live in cities with hard water, as the hard water contains calcium particles that can easily deface and stain good jewelry.
Stained jewelry doesn’t reduce the value of gold and silver, but they don’t look as good, so it may be a practical decision to buy one later on if you want to easily clean your collection.
If not, here are some tips for some quick cleaning sessions:
- Grab an old, soft-bristled toothbrush, add some generic toothpaste and scrub away at your designer jewelry. Toothpaste is designed to loosen and lift away dirt and grime without affecting the surface of the tooth enamel, so it should be a problem for metals like gold and silver.Yes, you can use this method even if you are cleaning complicated jewelry with lots of nooks and crannies, as the bristles will take care of the dirt for you.
Just remember to brush gently even if it seems to be frustrating in the beginning, as over-brushing can damage the surface of softer metals, like gold. You can rinse and repeat the brushing if you need to remove more of the grime, just maintain the brushing to a moderate pace and pressure.
- For silver jewelry, even those with set gemstones, you can lint-free cloth to polish the jewelry after soaking and cleaning. Instead of a brush, you can use a silver cleaning cloth as these are especially effective for jewelry that has a lot of details and has chains attached to them. It can work extremely well for bracelets and necklaces of every size and length.
- Dishwashing soaps or detergents can be used on jewelry as long they’re mixed with water and they are rinsed away quickly. Silver and gold jewelry can be cleaned safely with dish detergent. However, This is not recommended for jewelry with gemstones or semi-precious stones as gemstones tend to absorb moisture and chemicals, which may lead to their staining.All you need is a few drops mixed with water and a toothbrush. Take note that you must also avoid using hot water on gemstones as these can damage the precious stones. Soaking time for dish detergents is about a quarter of an hour, or if the jewelry just needs a bit of sprucing up, you can reduce the soak time to about ten minutes, followed by some gentle brushing.
- Club soda is an excellent ingredient for DIY jewelry solutions as these are neutral and will not cause damage to metals. We recommend combining club soda with other cleaning agents like ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and the like. Combine with water, the resulting solution should be mild enough not to damage any kind of jewelry.
- Silver jewelry can get a nice polish from exposure to hot water and strips of tin foil. Simply cut strips of tin foil and submerge them along with your silver jewelry. For the first round of natural cleaning, soak for five minutes and then pat dry. If you’re still not satisfied, simply re-soak twice or thrice, and then dry.
