A bit of elbow grease

[ShaunMaxwell]

I've seen some good things done with putting silver into a bath of dilute lemon juice (or any ionic solution, like salt water) and aluminum foil. From what I understand of the chemistry, it strips off the oxygen atoms from the tarnished silver and deposits it onto the aluminum. It supposedly is a near perfect reversal of the silver tarnishing process, in a way that can't be done with structurally-damaging volume-expanding oxides like rust. Do some research yourself - I'm no expert - but it might be worth a try for buttons or if you can remove the cantle from the sporran.

I used a similar method to clean a sterling cantle I'd removed from a rather moth-eaten sealskin sporran, with great effect. I put a sheet of foil (shiny side up) in a glass baking dish deep enough to cover the cantle when filled with water. I liberally sprinkled the cantle/pieces with baking soda, then poured boiling water over it — enough to submerge the cantle/pieces. It produces a bit of a reaction. I repeated the process a couple of times and had a good result:



Cheers,

SM