How to Cleaned a Heavily Tarnished Piece of Jewelry (non-toxic)
I had a heavily tarnished ring I found and it was BLACK!!
This ring was my grandmothers from Russia! So it was worth giving it a good clean.
I don't trust the silver cleaners you can get since they are highly chemical based and can remove some of the silver itself. In the past when I used these cleaners, the item would look great initially but then look 10 times worse after a short period of time.
All you really need is some aluminum foil, hot water and baking soda.
Place the foil and jewelry in a glass and cover with baking soda. Make sure the item is touching the foil.
Then pour hot water. WARNING: some have said that the hot water can affect the glue holding stones in place, use at your own discretion!
I used a toothbrush and added new hot water over the course of about 30 minutes.
You can already see a huge difference!
Then I used a polishing cloth some elbow grease. This one was new when I started and completely black after just the one ring.
I would say I breathed new life into this old ring.
To prevent from future tarnishing , keep your silver in a dark cool area (especially in humid regions) and limit exposure to water by removing jewelry when washing your hands.
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Putting a piece of aluminum foil in jewelry & silver chests & storage boxes will help prevent tarnish - sulfur, the culprit in tarnishing, is more attracted to aluminum than to silver molecules, so bonds with the foil leaving your silver items un-tarnished. Especially protect silver plated & sterling items when painting with latex/acrylic painting is planned - move them out of the house if possible - since a those paints give off fumes that will turn all silver items black with tarnish!
I have tried tooth paste, and that worked also. Thanks fo the great info!