Cleaning off 90 years of dirt...

[evan]

I've been trying to polish my York Eb Helicon with some Wright's silver cream and generally clean it up so that it'll work again. (I think it spent more than 50 years now as a wall decoration). It seemed like it was taking forever to get any bright silver to show up. I realized that I was mostly pushing around > 50 years of dirt, so I borrowed some industrial strength Orange-Sol from the machine shop at work. That stuff worked GREAT! I thought it was actually polishing the metal for a while, but I think the helicon was just half black with dirt.

I haven't done much other than the slides & the middle valve casing (which went from permanently stuck up or down to working like new). Do you guys think this stuff could hurt the metal? The ingredients are "organic hydrocarbons, citrus oils, and organic wetting agents." I've been pretty careful so far to wash the parts I've cleaned with warm water + dish soap after the Orange-Sol.

Link: Orange Sol

BTW, it leaves the horn with a faint orange smell afterwards

-Evan[/url]

[UDELBR]

I've been trying to polish my York Eb Helicon with some Wright's silver cream and generally clean it up so that it'll work again.

Gotta be a little careful using polish on dirty instruments, as you're scraping the abrasive grime into whatever finish may be left. Much better to (as you did!) use some cleaner or solvent to remove whatever schmutz is on the metal before polishing.

[Haugan]

Well........ I guess we know whatever is in tarnish, It's not toxic. Henry..., HENRY??.....

[Lew]

Tarnish consists of Silver Sulfide. Here's a link to some information about it:

http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SI/silver_sulfide.html

It can't be too harmful because people have been eating from silver dishes and utensils for years and there is always some trace of tarnish on those.