5 Strange Ways to Oxidise Your Silver With Food at Home

In this video, I'm going to show you 5 different food that you can use to blacken your silver. Hi, if we haven't met, I'm a jeweller, professional optical diamond setter, and a GIA graduate gemmologist based in the UK. I've been making jewellery using real gemstones and precious metals since 2003. It has taken me over 20 years to get to this point. In most of the situations, whenever we need to blacken our silver, we will dissolve some leaf of silver into some solution, or we can use platinum oxidization solution to blacken our silver. However, when the object is some cutleries such as silver spoons or silver knives, then I don't feel comfortable to use pure chemical to oxidize them. So in that case, I will use food to blacken them. In this video, I am going to show you 5 different food that you can use to blacken your silver. Let's get started. To prepare your silver for oxidization, you want to make sure the surface is free from any oil, dust, or residues. To do that, you can wash your silver with mild detergent and then rinse it under water thoroughly. After that, you can pat it dry, and then you will know your silver is ready for oxidization. The first food that you can oxidize silver is mustard. Mustard can be used to create patina on silver due to the presence of vinegar and turmeric. Which can react with silver and oxidize its surface. To maximize the contact, I use mustard powder. To do that, I normally mix the mustard powder with water to create a paste, not too thin or not too thick. If it's too thin, it'll be too runny. If it's too thick, it's hard to get into the detail of my silver. And then I will use a soft paintbrush to make sure all the details of my silver is touched with this mustard paste. I normally let it sit overnight. This is to ensure the mustard to have enough time to interact with my silver to create a patina. After that, I rinse the silver with water thoroughly to make sure all the mustards are gone. If you like this video so far, do you mind clicking the like button or even the subscribe button if you haven't? That will really encourage me to make more videos like this. Thank you. The second type of food that you can use to oxidize your silver is tea. The reason why tea can be used to oxidize your silver is It contains tannins, which is a type of compound that can react with your silver to create a patina. Black tea in particular is normally used for this purpose because black tea contains much higher tannins compared to any other type of tea. To make the solution, I brew a strong cup of black tea which I normally use 5 tea bags to increase the concentration of my solution. After that, I let it cool down to room temperature and then merge my silver chain into the tea. Make sure it is fully covered, and I will let this solution to sit overnight. The next morning, I will rinse this chain thoroughly under tap water. And that's it. Using vinegar is another way to create a patina and oxidize your silver. The acid in vinegar can react with silver to create a darker surface.

To make it stronger, I also add some vinegar powder to make the process go quicker. They are all food-grade. Silver turns black gradually. It depends on the environment it is in. Vinegar can significantly speed up the process. So here I use 9-degree rice vinegar. Originally I bought this vinegar to make pickle, but later figured out it is too strong, so I use it to blacken my silver instead.

I submerge the silver in this solution and make sure it is fully covered and let the whole thing sit there for overnight. But if you don't want it to be too dark, you can take it out in a few hours. Once you think it is done, remove the silver from the solution and rinse it thoroughly under tap water. The fourth type of food that you can use to oxidize your silver is hard-boiled egg. It doesn't matter if it's chicken egg or duck egg. I have tried both. Both work equally fine. Using eggs to oxidize silver involves harnessing the sulfur compound in the egg white and egg yolk to create a patina on the silver surface. Personally, I prefer using the egg white because it is much less messy. It is much easier to clean than the egg yolk. Plus I can just eat the egg yolk to compensate my hard work. Here I use duck eggs. That's because I have 2 ducks here that they lay eggs every day. But if you use chicken eggs, the results will be the same. The only difference might be I have more white on my duck eggs than on the chicken egg because duck eggs are generally speaking bigger than chicken eggs. The last food you can use to oxidize your silver is coffee. Using coffee to oxidize the silver involves utilizing the tannins in coffee to create a natural patina to oxidize the silver surface. This is a method to artificially age or darken the appearance of silver jewelry or silver objects. This process can create an antique or vintage look. To do that, you use boiling hot water to make a strong cup of black coffee.

Because the active chemical in the coffee is not as concentrated as the one in oxidization solution, it is common that I have to repeat this process for many times to get the intense color, so just have to be patient.

It doesn't matter which way you use, in the end of any process, make sure you rinse your silver jewelry or silver object in tap water thoroughly to remove any residues. When you finish oxidizing, you can always mix a small amount of baking soda with water, dip your silver object into a baking soda solution In that way, it will neutralize the patina and stop the reaction. Rinse it and then pat dry. You can pat your silver item dry with a soft cotton cloth. Make sure you don't rub it too vigorously because the treatment is only surface deep. If you rub it too hard, you might create some scratches or even remove a layer of the oxidized surface. To protect the look, you can apply a thin layer of Renaissance Preserving Wax on the surface.

I normally rub it on gently with tissue paper. The only problem using food to oxidize silver is that it takes quite a long time to achieve the result. Sometimes I have to repeat the process for up to 20 or even 30 times, if you can believe, to get the patina I want. That's why I only use food to oxidize silver for cutlery.

If you like this video, you might want to check out the one here. I will see you in the next video.