{"id":293,"date":"2010-04-07T17:21:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/primitive.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/?p=293"},"modified":"2010-04-07T17:21:45","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:21:45","slug":"testing-materials-for-pickle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/2010\/04\/07\/testing-materials-for-pickle\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing Materials for Pickle"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATED 25\/04\/10<\/p>\n

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This post is a description of tests using simple household acids to pickle oxidised silver. 1mm sterling silver sheet was cut into pieces, weighing approximately 0.65g, and then oxidised with a small oxy-hydrogen torch. One piece was kept as a control, and the others were exposed to various substances. A discussion of pickles and de-oxidising during the early middle ages can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Each piece of silver was placed in a plastic cup with about 25ml of liquid, and left for three days. The intention was to find out whether they could be pickled at all – later tests will look at speeding up the process. In the case of orange juice and lime juice, the silver appeared not to be pickled, but cleaning it revealed it was just a residue that washed off with water.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Control, no liquid used\n

Whiskey (43% by vol), pH 5\n

Malt vinegar, pH 3.5\n

White wine vinegar, pH 3\n

Lime Juice (fresh), pH 2.5\n

Orange Juice (carton), pH 4\n<\/ol>\n

The whiskey didn’t effect the silver at any time. All the other acidic liquids successfully pickled the silver, although there were some slight residues left. A further test was done, in the same conditions as above. The results are:<\/p>\n

Borax solution, pH 10\n
Boric acid solution, pH 4\n
Saltwater, pH 6\n<\/ol>\n
Borax and boric acid had no effect. Saltwater did remove most of the oxide, but took a week to do so. The next test was done under the same conditions, with borax flux melted onto silver, leaving a glassy residue, but done without oxidising the silver:<\/p>\n
1. Borax solution, pH 10\n
2. Boric acid solution, pH 4\n
3. Malt Vinegar, pH 3.5\n
4. Whiskey, pH 5\n
5. Lime Juice pH 2.5\n
6. Caustic Soda, pH 12\n
7. Brine, pH 6\n<\/ol>\n
  The borax solution had no effect. Boric acid, vinegar and lime juice all worked within 24hrs. Whiskey, caustic soda and saltwater worked after 72hrs.<\/p>\n
  <\/br><\/p>\n
  The next test will be hot-quenching the silver, which drastically improves the speed of modern pickling acids. After that it might be worth exploring precisely how long it takes each substance or how well they work if they are distilled. I’ve also seen a passage from an old book which suggests a mixture of vinegar and salt, so I may explore combinations to see if anything is improved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
  UPDATED 25\/04\/10 This post is a description of tests using simple household acids to pickle oxidised silver. 1mm sterling silver sheet was cut into pieces, weighing approximately 0.65g, and then oxidised with a small oxy-hydrogen torch. One piece was kept as a control, and the others were exposed to various substances. A discussion of pickles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/primitive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}