Tips for Silver Care and Polishing Your Silver
Silver, Sterling Silver, and Silverplate - Easy how to care for, protect and preserve information:
Silver's enemy is tarnish. Here is information on how tarnish occurs and some guidelines to keep your silver safe and shiny:
Silver tarnish information
- Silver tarnish occurs on silver, sterling silver, and silverplate.
- Silver tarnish (also called Silver Sulfide) occurs when silver combines with sulfur. Sulfur can come from a variety of sources, with the most common being our air - which contains hydrogen sulfide. Another common source of sulpher is latex.
- Silver tarnish usually starts as with a yellowish tinge, which over time will become a purplish black color.
- Silver tarnish will wash off your hands with soap and water.
Silver care - keeping your silver safe and shiny
- Always gently clean silver tarnish from your silver, sterling silver, and silverplate. Jamestowne Fine Silver Polish is a gentle formula that does not scratch your silver, and will reduce or remove small scratches that were caused by harsh polishes.
- Use a silver polish with an Anti-Tarnishing shield, like Jamestowne Fine Silver Polish.
- Use your silver! Using your silver will help prevent tarnish. The more you handle your silver, the less opportunity will occur for tarnish buildup.
- Use soft cloths to polish and clean your silver. Do not use paper towels or other stiff or hard materials to apply polish and remove tarnish, so you do not scratch your silver.
- Microfiber can be the best or the worst type of cloth to use, so be aware of the many differences in Microfiber and the types of Microfiber cloth. Most dusting Microfiber cloths are too harsh for the cleaning of silver. The thick fluffy Microfiber that is ideal for catching and holding dust will usually scratch your silver. Microfibers designed for optical and LCD screens are usually ideal for silver polishing for they use the smallest possible size of microfiber. Check with the appropriate manufacturer before using a Microfiber cloth on silver.
- Keep your silver away from rubber, including dishmats, placemats, silverwear holders and rubber bands. Rubber contains sulfur, and the sulfur in the rubber will combine with your silver to make silver tarnish.
- Do not allow stainless steel flatware to touch your silver, sterling silver, or silverplated flatware. Silver is a very soft metal, and steel is a very hard metal. Your silver may become damaged or stained when in contact with the stainless steel. Wash stainless steel flatware separately from silver flatware. Nor, should you store them together.
- Don't allow food and silver to be together for long periods of time. Especially, never let silver be in extended contact with eggs, mayonnaise, or mustard. The sulfur in these foods will corrode silver.