Commercially available silver polishes taste horrible. Many of them also contain harmful chemicals. Not exactly something I’d like to put in my mouth! I realize that you’re not supposed to eat silver polish, but there might be some left on your silverware after you’re done polishing.
I’d much rather use something that does no harm to me and my taste buds in any case. Or to the environment.
Toothpaste makes both your teeth and silver shine
The silver polish I use, I willingly put in my mouth every day: toothpaste!
Using it is easy:
- Put a dab or three – as much as you need – of white toothpaste (not the gel variety, and stay away from the ones that are advertised as having a whitening effect on your teeth) on a soft, dampened cloth. Old cotton T-shirt scraps work well.
- Gently rub the toothpaste over the tarnished silver in a straight, back-and-forth motion. The toothpaste is a mild abrasive, and if you rub too hard, you might scratch your silver.
- As the tarnish comes off, your dampened cloth will become dark with tarnish. When this happens, add some more toothpaste to a clean part of the cloth and continue polishing. Remember to be gentle.
- If your silverware has intricate patterns or other hard-to-reach places, use a soft toothbrush to get to it.
- Once you’re done polishing, rinse your silver thoroughly with warm – not hot – water and dry it with a soft towel.
Voila! Your silver is nice and shiny and you’ve done no damage to the environment or yourself. You didn’t even need to wear rubber gloves while you were at it.
In fact, you really shouldn’t wear rubber gloves when handling silver anyway, since the sulphur traces in rubber will corrode silver.
Happy polishing!
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This post was tagged with: cleaning, polish, silver, silverware, toothpaste
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You write above that “Commercially available silver polishes taste horrible”. I was aware of its smell, but not its taste…
roy
@Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk: Well, you’re obviously thorough when you rinse your silver off after polishing then ;-D
To be honest, I don’t have any silver to shine, so I didn’t think of that
;-D