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I recently purchased Silver Polishing Gloves made by Bach. They made my horn look great.
Now I have these disgusting gloves covered in dirt and dust from my horn. Would anyone recommend cleaning these gloves for future use or are these disposable one time use?
Any other tips for cleaning a silver plated instrument?

Use the gloves for rehearsal if you want...

Hagarty used to market a pair of gloves and a spray can of polish. The deal was to wash the gloves after they were black and reapply the polish. They worked pretty good. You could use the gloves during rehearsals to brighten up the horn.

Thank You!

Here's the link to those Hagerty gloves. There are also some tips to keep silver looking good on the website.

http://hagertyusa.com/silver/products/s ... gloves.htm

I've actually never seen the polishing gloves. I will have to look into these. I usually keep a pack of disposable silver polish cloths in my truck for touch ups (used for jewelry). For a complete polish I use Wrights and an old white t-shirt. cheers!

-CT

How about lining one's bathtub with aluminum foil and filling it with hot water -- adding baking soda -- and placing all of the silver parts of the horn on the foil. Shake well (kidding), but be patient. No loss of silver, and a shiny instrument as a result.

Dylan King wrote:How about lining one's bathtub with aluminum foil and filling it with hot water -- adding baking soda -- and placing all of the silver parts of the horn on the foil. Shake well (kidding), but be patient. No loss of silver, and a shiny instrument as a result.

If you do this, be careful to clean all of the baking soda out of the horn. Also, before you put your horn back together, it must be BONE DRY first. Also, dry your horn thoroughly with a cloth diaper or other soft cloth. It is no good to remove tarnish from your horn this way only to leave it covered in water spots.

It works better with WASHING SODA, or sodium carbonate, rather than baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate. What happens is the soda is the catylist, and the reactive suphur ions which make tarnish are more chemically attracted to the aluminum than to the silver, so in the reaction they separate from the silver ions, leaving the silver to bond back to the silverplate on the horn, and the sulphur ions bond with the aluminum instead.

As posted above, you have to clean everything thoroughly afterwards. Everything: the horn, the bathtub, etc. I've even seen the aluminum actually be consumed by the sulphur into little bits on severely tarnished instruments.

I just get a bottle of 3M silver polish. Cover the horn with it and then take the horn into the shower. Wipe dry after 5 minutes and your good to go.

I like Hagartys Silver Smith Polish. It gives it a darker shine than the Wrights. But it depends on what type of shine you are looking for...Bottle of Hagartys and a polishing cloth does the trick really well. Maybe some cotton swabs to get in the tiny areas.