Tarnish on Nickel Silver Bolsters

donnord

donnord

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I recently picked up Buck 110 with Ni-Silver bolsters that are engraved and the engraving is accented with 24K gold. There is some dark tarnish in a couple of spots, I tried some never dull which helped a little bit, I tried a little silver paste as well, In both cases I was worried about damaging the gold. Is there a better product or method .IMG_2041.JPEG
 
A piece of hard felt would be best. You need to polish the flat spots, but not with something soft enough to deflect into the cuts.
Simichrome polish is my favorite, but any super fine abrasive polish should work.
 
Any abrasive is going to remove some metal, and so can also remove some gold.

Have you considered using a chemical treatment instead? Perhaps there are liquids you could use which will still leave the gold intact. Look into products for cleaning jewelry, maybe?

Gold doesn't rust or tarnish, so there could be many options to target the bad spots on the bolsters without damaging the gold.

24 karat gold is 99.99 percent pure, so it shouldn't have bad spots developing. If there are bad spots on the gold, then either the gold is significantly less pure than 24 karat, or it's not actually gold at all.
 
Do you know who did the work? They probably / may know a technique to clean / maintain it. Although I can see were it could be a issue moving forward.
 
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I don't know who did the work. The tarnish seems to be in between the gold on the silver. I made some good progress with a white drafting eraser. I will probably use flitz too.
 
I thought Simichrome was more aggressive than Flitz. I have also used Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish that you can find in the Walmart automotive section. I have not used these on gold inlay, but just for general polishing. Bill DeShivs has good advice above.
 
The decoration was originally done by hand engraving, then gold plating the bolster.
The plating is then gently sanded off the bolster and the bolster is polished-leaving the gold in the cuts.
If the tarnish spots are deep, you may have to go over the engraving with wet/dry sandpaper-no coarser than 600 grit. Finer grit is better. Then polish.
 
Thanks for the advise, I thought about the wet/dry, maybe I can glue some to a wood dowel or stick. I just dont want to overdo it. I actually have two of these but one is engraved and not inlayed and the bolsters are smooth. On the inlay you can feel the edges of the cuts, so maybe a little sanding would do it good?
 
Bill is correct if it is plated, but it may be gold leaf.

Sizing is applied to the area you want the gold to stick. Then gold leaf is pressed onto the sizing. The excess is just brushed off. No need to sand. The gold only sticks to the sizing. Its super thin, like the stuff in goldschlarger sp?
 
I think its gold leaf, I hit it with some 1500 grit on a couple of spots, then polish. It looks OK AND I am not messing with anymore.....for a bit.
 
It's not gold leaf. It's gold plated. I do both hand engraving and gold plating.
I know how these things are done-having done it myself.
 
Interesting, it never occurred to me. I am thinking that there is less chance of damaging it when polishing if it is plated???
 
donnord said:
Interesting, it never occurred to me. I am thinking that there is less chance of damaging it when polishing if it is plated???
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Plated items are at a greater risk from polishing. Polishing pastes like Simichrome or Flitz and many others have very fine abrasives in them, like aluminum oxide or silica. The plating is very, very thin and in soft metals like gold. The manufacturers of the polishing pastes warn they shouldn't be used on plated items - this is because the abrasives will quickly strip off the plating.

Bill's advice to use something firm for the backing media holding the polish is good, because it'll help prevent the deflection of the backing media down into the engraving where the plating is applied, and instead only polish the nickel silver face of the bolsters, which is a solid, very thick material and isn't at the same risk for damage, like the plating is vulnerable to.
 
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