Working with Jewellery Pickle

Working with metal is a rewarding and creative job or hobby. A fair amount of patience, artistic flair and a steady hand are needed in order to make the perfect piece. When working with fine metals and making jewellery, you will be doing a lot of soldering, fusing your perfect design together to make the shapes and spheres you desire.

Metal smiths and jewellery makers will need to use some sort of acidic solution, to help them remove oxides and stubborn tarnish, from the surface of precious metals that have been heated, soldered, casted or annealed.

Jewellery Pickle is a proprietary gentle acidic formulation, designed specifically for use with precious metals and soft metals like silver, which tarnish, flux and oxidize easily after being worked with. The solution is made up of a combination of nitric acid, sulphuric acid and sparex, which is incredibly acidic and will need to keep in a secure container, safely out of reach of harm.

During use the formula also needs to be kept warm using something like the.A slow cooker, crock pot or coffee pot would work very well in keeping the Jewellery Pickle at the right temperature to work with. It goes without saying that if you have up-cycled a kitchen appliance, it cannot be reintegrated into the kitchen ever again for food use, as the build up on the inside of the container will be extremely toxic.

You will also need a pair of copper tongs to handle your metal items, and to dip them in and out of the warm solution.

Copper is the best metal to use for dipping metal items into the pickle, as it won’t contaminate the pickle solution, so you will be able to keep it clean, and be able to continue using it for a long time. If you don’t keep your pickle mixture clean, it will hinder the soldering process, and possibly even permanently contaminate your item of metal jewellery.

Working with jewellery pickle takes some very careful practice; the solution is highly acidic and it has been
heated. Take great care not to just drop or throw your metal item into the solution. Lower it slowly, use the copper tongs and be careful not to let the solution splash out of the pot.

Always make sure that you wear protective clothing and protective eye and hand gear, such as goggles, gloves and an apron, when working with acids and pickle solutions.

click here to get your slow cooker and safty pickle