electrolysis question

I could use some advice here. I used a 9 volt output / 500ma battery charger to do a buffalo nickle. I used tap water with salt added to the water. The buffalo was in crummy shape and the electrolysis cleaned it up pretty good. But it is still not great.
The problem is that it turned to a brass color. I can see 2 tiny spots where it looks like a regular nickle color. It was in the solution for around 6 hours.
What did I do wrong or should it have been in there longer?
This has never happened before to me.
I am stuck.......

I think I answered my own question.
I forgot to put in the washing soda and put in the salt instead.

[hanjixlt]

I've never used electrolysis, except in highschool art class one year. I've seen how-tos on making a electrolysis unit, but was wondering if there are any pre-made units specifically for coin cleaning, etc?

Also, you always see mention that you should never "clean" coins, but does electrolysis fall under the same category? I would think it wouldn't since it's non-abrasive.
Do you know of price ranges etc?
Are they good for cleaning silver as well as copper?
Is it most effective with ferrous items?

Sorry about so many electrolysis questions.. but it's snowing here.. it's easy to get stuck on something when you're snow'd in.

As usual.. thanks for the help.
hanjixlt

I've never used electrolysis, except in high school art class one year. I've seen how-tos on making a electrolysis unit, but was wondering if there are any pre-made units specifically for coin cleaning, etc?

Also, you always see mention that you should never "clean" coins, but does electrolysis fall under the same category? There was a program on the Discovery channel about Mel Fisher's finds. They show the electrolysis tanks that they use on old silver coins. I figure if it is good enough for them it is good enough for me. It stated that they leave some of the stuff in it for months. I have used it on heavy crusted coins with good success. I would think it wouldn't since it's non-abrasive.
Do you know of price ranges etc? My small one is just a old battery charger for the nicads from a older Whites machine, All I bought was 2 alligator clips. Total of around $2.00.
Are they good for cleaning silver as well as copper?
Is it most effective with ferrous items? It works very well on old horseshoes / axes and iron stuff for me. On the larger stuff a regular old car battery charger works good. I am sure that there are lots of other opinions forthcoming from the members on T.Q.

Sorry about so many electrolysis questions.. but it's snowing here.. it's easy to get stuck on something when you're snow'd in.

As usual.. thanks for the help.
hanjixlt
__________________

[PAPPY]

Boobie..You are using TOO MUCH POWER ! The spots you see on the coins are where you had your clips.
If you have and old discarded power plug adaptor ( The kind used for telephones) split the wires and use small aligator clips. You can only do one coin at a time with this set up but it does a better job...PAPPY

[l38ranger]

Tips on Cleaning Your Finds

When you start finding those old silver coins, you probably wonder how to clean them. There are several methods that we use to clean our finds all the time, and we would like to share them with you in simple, easy to understand directions.

NOTE:
DO NOT CLEAN OLD COINS THAT YOU SUSPECT ARE VALUABLE!
It will cut their value in half! Ask a local coin dealer first.

Baking soda method

This is a very easy to do cleaning method. However, it doesn't work on everything, and it is mostly used to clean old silver coins that you find in the ground.
Just wet the coin and dip it in some baking soda and clean it with an old toothbrush. This will take the tarnish off, and make your coin shiny without scratching it.
Tumbling method

Use a rock tumbler if you want to clean lots of old coins at once! All those clad coins you've been finding! It will cost you around $60.00 for a rock tumbler, or you might be able to find a cheaper one on Ebay.com (But try not to get the plastic ones, they make too much noise while tumbling.)
How to tumble old coins

Next time you go to the beach gather some small pebbles and some sand. Put your coins in the tumbler, add the pebbles, and about 2 tablespoons of the sand to make the tumbler about 3/4 full. Fill with water (to a little below the top of the pebbles) and add a touch of liquid detergent. Put the lid on and shake it to distribute the coins and pebbles evenly.
Let it tumble for about an hour. Open it up and drain off the dirty water. Refill with clean water, add a touch of liquid detergent and tumble for another couple hours or overnight.
Open it up and pour into a strainer or screen that has holes large enough to let your pebbles and sand fall through, but not your coins. Rinse the coins well, and spread them out on newspaper or an old towel to dry. We tumble brass and copper things that have corrosion on them too, like buckles and buttons and keys, etc. Some people like to separate their copper coins from their silver coins when they tumble them. We have tried it both ways, and if you decide to tumble them together, don't let them tumble too long, or your silver (or clad) coins will turn a permanent copper color.
Electrolysis method

When we first tried to find information on how to build an electrolysis unit, we couldn't find much and it was confusing on how to do it.
After joining a club, one of the members showed us how it's done. We think this is the simplest, easiest method.
And to make it even simpler for you, we made a step by step tutorial with pictures. Most components you probably have around the
house.

Click Here to start the tutorial.
Ammonia method

Fill a small jar with ammonia, add your gold or silver items, put on the lid and let sit for awhile. Open it up later and polish each piece with a soft cloth. This works best for gold. We have tried old silver coins that we found in the salt water, but afterwards you need to use the baking soda and a toothbrush also to get all the black off.
Jewelry Cleaners

There are plenty of cleaning methods and products out there for cleaning your silver and gold rings, some of them can cost you a pretty buck, and others are no more then a couple of dollars. Here is a few products that we use all the time that you may want to try for yourself.

NEVR-DULL is a cotton wadding polish that cleans and polishes all metals including:
silver, gold, brass, copper, pewter, glass, steel, aluminum and chromium.
Removes rust and tar, leaves no deposits in the crevices of metal work.
Directions: Tear off a small portion of the wadding and rub the article to be cleaned until all dirt is removed. Then finish with with a dry, soft cloth to obtain a brilliant, lasting luster Nontoxic, and we only paid $5.99.
www.edish.com
BLITZ Jewelry Care Cloths

This polishing cloth is the best way to brighten your silver or gold rings and chains. They already have the polish in the cloth! It is two pieces of soft cloth sewn together in the middle. One cloth has the cleaning agent and the other cloth is for buffing. We were recently introduced to these fantastic little cloths at our club meeting. The best news is that they are so affordable, costing only about $2.99, and you can get them at Walmart.

Blue Magic Metal Polish

This is a product we use all the time to clean our gold rings and other jewelry. Safe and nonabrasive, removes oxidation and tarnish. Works on gold, silver, chrome, aluminum, copper, brass, stainless steel.
It kind of reminds me of toothpaste. Blue magic liquid metal polish works like magic on virtually every surface.
Directions:
Shake well. Apply small amount with soft cloth. Rub until a black film appears. Buff off with a clean soft cloth or buffer. Blue magic leaves a protective film. We paid $3.99 for it.
Buffing Wheels

If the rings have a lot of scratches, you may want to invest in a buffing wheel to do a better job. There are many different wheels and polishing compounds to chose from. Medium soft wheels work good for me. I have a soft wheel as well but find it too flimsy and takes forever to get a nice luster.
I got one at Home Depot for about $50.00. I have a grinding wheel on one side and a buffing wheel on the other. Very handy tool to have around the house anyway.
Read our new page with some information about silver, silver coins,
and another method of how to clean old silver.

[l38ranger]

Electrolysis Coin Cleaning Tutorial

NOTE: DO NOT CLEAN COINS THAT YOU SUSPECT ARE VALUABLE!
It will cut their value in half! Ask a local coin dealer first.
Disclaimer: You're doing this at your own risk. We will not be held responsible for any damage in case you burn your house down or any injuries caused by this project.
The first thing you need to get is an 9, 12 or 18 volt AC/DC adapter from an old phone, transistor radio, or something like that. The higher the voltage the better.
We found an 18 volt adapter at a thrift store for two dollars. Maybe you have one laying around in a drawer in your house somewhere.
Cut off the small plug at the other end of your adapter, and separate the wires. Strip the ends and attach an alligator clip to each wire with the screws that are supplied.





You can find alligator clips at a local hardware store or WALMART.
Don't buy the copper colored ones!!!









Find a stainless steel spoon, a glass cup, some salt, and you are almost ready to roll!






Fill the glass cup with cold water and add a teaspoon of salt and stir it up well.
For better conductivity of the water you could add several drops of lemon juice concentrate, but if you don't have it around don't worry, it will still work!






Now you will have to figure out which clip has the positive and the negative wires. The negative goes to the coin and the positive to the spoon.
If you don't have the tester to figure this out, don't worry, it's simple to figure out.
Put the stainless steel spoon in the glass and attach one of the alligator clips to it and attach the other clip to the coin.
Plug the adapter into the wall outlet and submerge the coin in the salty solution so it's completely covered without touching the spoon.






If your spoon starts bubbling you need to switch the alligator clips around.
After finding the negative wire, I put a knot on it so I know it goes to the coin.
If all is well the coin will start fizzling and bubbling within a few seconds. Make sure the alligator clip is touching the bare metal on the coin. You may have to remove a little of the corrosion to get to the bare metal.
In a couple of minutes it should look like a small cloud of dirt is forming around the coin.





The electrical current is passing through the coin and separating all nonmetallic particles off the coin.
After a few minutes the cloud will get bigger and it will start smelling not so good, so keep your window open.








Usually it takes about five minutes to clean up a coin. But it won't hurt to occasionally lift it out of the solution to check how it's doing.
After five minutes it should look something like this. Lots of black gunk floating on top.








When you feel it's done, unplug your unit. Don't ever leave the unit plugged in unattended because it gets real hot and could melt or catch on fire.
Here's what our coin looks like after pulling it out. I didn't disturb it while it was "cooking" so you could see better how the corrosion is just peeling off the coin.
It looked pretty horrible before we started.

[l38ranger]

Electrolysis to Clean Coins


Here's a closer view. To stop the reaction get some baking soda and while rinsing your coin under a faucet, use an old toothbrush and rub some of the baking soda on it. I usually use my fingers, which works good also, but the black will stain your fingers.
After cleaning this coin up I was surprised to see many details including the date on this Standing Liberty quarter.
Hope you found this tutorial useful. We will try to write some more like this one in the near future, so stop by often!
Others who dared to try : )

We do get a large amount of emails from folks about this tutorial. Some love it, others can't get it to work. This one email stroke me as quite interesting, and I asked Mark is it was OK to post it here. I thought it would be a great addition to this page, so we can see how others are using electrolysis to their advantage.
From Mark Brophy
I just wanted to pass on a word of thanks to who ever wrote this article, your instructions for making a home based electrolysis set up was easy to follow and build.
I recently got back in to coin collecting, and while out antiquing with my wife I came across a bulk bag of ancient Roman coins so I bought them. I did clean some of the coins the old fashioned way by soaking them in various solutions and using polishes like "Peek" to do the rest.
Cleaning ancient coins is a time consuming, pain staking effort - that I enjoy doing, however coupled with your electrolysis set up the coins come out much cleaned and with sharper original detail coming to life.
Please see two photo on the right, back and front of the first Roman coin I cleaned with your electrolysis set up - I am impressed.
These photos do not do this particular coin any justice, If you saw this in your hand, you would be as impressed as I with the final results.
It does not stop with the electrolysis, but a very good start.
Here are a couple of things I learned so far:
A) I use a 12 volt transformer, I fully intent to get one of higher voltage.
B) Depending on the size of glass, you may want to up the salt content to 2 teaspoons, or more.
C) What ever spoon you use for the positive pole, will eventually become useless as an eating utensil, the electrolysis process will damage the spoon over time.
D) Do not be shy with the lemon juice, 1 ounce to a glass of water seems to work fine.
E) I have found that 5 minutes is not quite enough time, I have had a single coin in electrolysis for up to an hour, with great results.
The only caution here is you need to watch the transformer carefully for the longer it runs the hotter it gets - real hot. For the people who claim your set up does not work, ask them to leave the coin or object in the electrolysis for 10 to 15 minutes, if the water has not changed color by then, or no bubbling is visible - then it is possible that what they are trying to clean does not have a metal alloy base.
Final Cleaning:
A) You will need some very fine steel wool #00, the type used to clean glass, this will help buff out any remaining dirt, build up off of the face, and it will not damage the coin in any way.
B) With a soft tooth brush, use a polish like "Peek", and apply with the brush, do not let dry but stand for a few seconds, then buff with a soft cloth. The alloys I have tested with your process so far, with success, would be Gold, Silver, Bronze & Copper. The photos here are of a Copper coin.

[PAPPY]

GREAT POST RANGER...THANKS...PAPPY