Put an Antique Finish on Your New Silver
While new or freshly polished silver is quite beautiful, sometimes you want a new piece to look older. Perhaps to fit a new replacement piece into an old tea set, or maybe you just like the look of antique silver jewelry. Whatever the reason, you can put the look of years on any piece of silver
Contents
Steps
- Clean the silver to be antiqued. A good choice is to use cool water and a mild detergent, such as dish liquid or liquid hand soap. The purpose of this step is to remove any oils on the silver which might mask it against the effects of the antiquing process. You should handle the cleaned silver with latex gloves for the rest of the process.
- Hard boil an egg. Just as if you were going to eat it. You usually only need one so I like to boil it in a small saucepan, this allows you to bring the water to a boil much faster.
- Remove the egg yolk and crumble it into a Zip-Loc bag. Warning: Make sure egg has cooled. Freshly boiled egg can burn you!
- Place silver pieces to be antiqued into the Zip-Loc bag. Make sure the silver is fairly evenly coated with yolk.
- Allow silver to set overnight. (Approx. 6 to 8 hrs.) Warning: Do NOT forget about your antiquing silver. If silver is left too long it may over-tarnish and become pitted!
- Remove silver from egg yolks and clean thoroughly. Silver should now be completely black.
- Polish the high-points of the designs on your silver. For this you can use your favorite direct-application silver polish, and a Q-Tip or small paint brush or the corner of a clean, soft rag for larger pieces.
- Rinse off polish. If the piece looks the way you want it, you're done! If not, you can repeat the previous step until you achieve the desired effect.
- Finished.
Tips
- After antiquing you may wish to varnish your silver to lock it into the state you like it.
- Depending on the size or quantity of silver, you may actually need more eggs. Use your best judgement. Know that putting in too much egg yolk in won't accelerate the process, just waste egg. Putting in too little Will, however, cause the process to take longer, or give you an uneven coat of tarnish.
- Remove tarnish slowly. It's easy to remove more, but very hard to add it back on.
- Although technically not an "antique" look, polishing the raised surfaces to a like-new shine can create a beautiful and striking contrast that looks very good on jewelry especially.
- Enjoy! Antique silver is beautiful, and antiqued silver jewelry can be a real fashion statement!
Warnings
- Make sure these are pieces you want antiqued. Polishing removes a layer of metal, so tarnishing unnecessarily will just speed the wear of your precious silver.
- Don't forget about your tarnishing silver. If left too long the silver could pit! Unfortunately there's not much you can do to save a pitted piece of silver.
- Careful! Freshly boiled eggs are hot. You don't want to burn your fingers!
Things You'll Need
- Silver you want to antique
- An egg(s)
- A pan for boiling your egg(s)
- A Zip-Loc bag(s)
- Q-Tips or a small paint brush (or both)
- Silver polish that's okay for direct application (read the label)
