Coin cleaning experiment today
Robert Mozeleski
http://userweb.ncx.com/moz/moz/default.html
Went to the local flea mart and picked up a dirty 1943, 1944 merc dime and 1944 quarter for $1.00 each. Then scanned it, then
dipped it for 15 minutes and scanned it again. The question i am posing is this: The liquid or whatever i used to clean this coin
is unknown to me. My father had a TV repair shop back in the 60's-70's. When old tv tuners would get scratchy or dirty instead of
spraying them with contact aerosol cleaner, they would take out the tuner and let them soak in this liquid. It would clean up the
oxidized silver contacts. My dad doesn't remember what this liquid is called or what it actually is. It's in a 1/2 gallon glass
container,brownish liquid, not flammable. It doesn't have a odor i can describe but if you shake it up it gets bubbles on top much
like soap bubbles. It does work fairly slow as i first tested it on a old silver plated fork and after maybe 15 minutes you could
slightly see a line where it was dipped to. The dime i left in about 15 minutes then rubbed very gently with a q-tip and the black
on the dime just floated away. Question is what could this liquid be? I'm not going to dip any coins in my collection, just the
few i bought for $1 each. Bored on a sunday afternoon, but i think it cleaned it fairly well. The pictures got saved as gif's
instead of jpg's when i made this web page for some reason so the detail in them isn't as fine as the scanned pictures were. Here
is the single jpg's before and after of the obverse.
http://userweb.ncx.com/moz/1943a.jpg
http://userweb.ncx.com/moz/1943acleaned.jpg
Comments,questions,hazards?
A.Shevchenko 7
all the rest may be everything extra, let's say someone sh***ed on it, do u
have to consider that part of the coin ?history ? value ? don't think so.
you removed some bad stuff on it.
:-)
imho.
Jim
>My father had a TV repair shop back in the 60's-70's. When old tv tuners would
get scratchy or dirty instead of spraying them with contact aerosol cleaner,
they would take out the tuner and let them soak in this liquid. My dad doesn't
remember what this liquid is called or what it actually is.<
The good old aerosol contact cleaner "used" to be a combination of carbon
tetrachloride, alcohols and naptha. Nowadays the environmental police have
diluted it to a new friendly form of naptha with no carbon tet and just enough
alcohol to make it barely usable. If what you have bubbles when shaken, perhaps
it's an old naptha based compound of some sort. If you go to an industrial
supply house or good hardware store, open a can of Naptha or "Safety Solvent"
as it's often called and see if that's the odor.
I don't know what's in coin dip, but would imagine it contains something like
Tarn-X.
You are only as wise as others perceive you to be.
--=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=----=*=--
Andrew
From the looks of the before and after it did not just clean the coin of the
gunk, it was removing everything rather indiscriminately. Look at the
surface of the before coin and mentally note where some of the few 'clean'
areas are with relation to the dirty areas. On the 'cleaned' pic the fields
directly beneath where the gunk was are rather shiny (just the surface
corrosion was lifted) but where the coins surface was already exposed notice
how dull they are. It appears that whatever that fluid was it was just
eating away at everything; dirt, silver, everything.
Is if chemically active on copper as well? Take some out and put it in a
separate container (so as not to contaminate it and make the rest of your
experiments come out copper colored) and put in a few bronze and zinc lincs
and see what you get. How about nickels? Just wondering...
-Andy in Pittsburgh
Robert Mozeleski
state quarter and it actually toned it somewhat.
Nick
wrote:
>My guess would be a liguid Brasso that they still sell in a little can with pop up lid. Nick
Robert Mozeleski
clean silver though, not flameable. I am just wondering if this is hazardous or something simple.
"Nick " <nva...@ptd.net> wrote in message news:3c3a2adc...@news.ptd.net...
doug strain
"Robert Mozeleski" <m...@ncx.com> writes:
>
>It's not brasso, this stuff looks more like beer or ginger ale.Pours like water and makes bubbles if you shake it up. It does
>clean silver though, not flameable. I am just wondering if this is hazardous or something simple.
>of
>> >spraying them with contact aerosol cleaner, they would take out the tuner and let them soak in this liquid. It would clean up
next time get a scudzy large cent and give it a try. my guess is some sort of
(and i can't think of the chemical name...mebbe trichlorethene....) dry
cleaning solvent that evaporates very quickly....or similar to blue ribbon.
just my 2 large cents worth,
doug
Bob Rudd
were scanning QVC. Well, they were selling this cleaning
"liquid". They demonstrated it by dipping old brown pennies
in it and VOILA immediate clean, MS 70 red state to the
untrained eye.
My wife, a totally untrained eye, asked if I wanted it for my
coin collection. I ran from the room screaming.
Then I had a bottle sent to Bill Krummel for his coin club
sales and Eric Tillary for his Ebay auctions.
hehehehehe :)
The QVC part though was true.
--
I hope we can all be good neighbors online!
Bill Krummel
Bob Rudd <bob...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16a57bcfd...@news.bellatlantic.net...
> With all too much time on my hands this weekend, my wife and I
> were scanning QVC. Well, they were selling this cleaning
> "liquid". They demonstrated it by dipping old brown pennies
> in it and VOILA immediate clean, MS 70 red state to the
> untrained eye.
>
> My wife, a totally untrained eye, asked if I wanted it for my
> coin collection. I ran from the room screaming.
>
> Then I had a bottle sent to Bill Krummel for his coin club
> sales and Eric Tillary for his Ebay auctions.
Geez, Bob, I drank mine. Thought it went with the cookies. Bill