Re: Before and After Pics of Coronet after Peroxide Bath
downindixie said:
I would start out with a 2 days soak in distilled water then brush with a denture tooth brush.repeat until your sure nothing else is coming off or it appears the job is done.Then go from there,In cleaning ancient coins,I might go to olive oil soak,it might darken the coin a might,but will loosen some hard dirt.Yours doesn't appear to require the olive oil soak.A lot of time if the encrustation is really hard I might zap it lightly.
I believe the soaking in distilled water is good -AFTER cleaning with peroxide, and I do that now afterwards by heating my distilled water than placing the coin in and depending upon the noted porousity I take it out after half hour or up to an overnighter. I believe the using of the tooth bursh with just the water is more harsh method and it is basically friction removing the dirt.
The Peroxide uses friction also but by using wet cotton swabs there is not near as much chance of a micro piece of sand/rock scratching while removing the dirt that is left during the peroxide cleaning. I probably go through about 10-15 cotton swabs for each coin I clean, and if the coin is corroded, you must be more gentle with the cotton swabs.
After the distilled water soak, then I put the coin under a desk lamp and make sure it gets a thorughly drying before either applying Blue Ribbon if needed or coating the coin in wax.
The use of Olive Oil on Ancients seems to be a very acceptable method due to the eons of crud on those coins and the fact their composition is different from the Colonial era and Federal era coppers. I know of some who have tried Peroxide and it just did not touch the crud, but since I never have had the opportunity to have an ancient I don't know for certain if Peroxide would work on one or not with some modifications to how it is accomplished.
I think the soaking in distilled water is a very nice passive method of cleaning but what is then used to remove that loosened dirt should be something as soft as possible, so perhaps your method with using cotton swabs might be an improvement?
One thing I like about H2O2 is the quickness of the process, sure beats soaking in olive oil, and yes folks, I did that for about 20 years, well versed in the results with olive oil, and its messy aftermath years later.
Don
