pickling question

**Ominicci** · 09-10-2009, 08:56 AM

I heat my pickle in a tiny pyrex dish over a plate warmer heated by a tea light. If I light it in the morning it lasts 4 hours and will 'pickle' all day as it is slightly warmer than room temperature.

**WitchfordSilver** · 10-10-2009, 11:35 AM

I use the safety pickle, and if i'm working at night i don't bother to turn on my heater and just leave it in the pot untill i return the next night. 20hrs or so does not seem to cause me any problems.

I have a pot of water filled with baking soda, in to which all things pickled go in to. just in case some pickle is left in any hollows.

I have heard that somefolks think the to long in the pickle weekens the joint, but I just keep the joint away from the pickle, only placing the silver items in

**lucy81** · 12-10-2009, 09:29 AM

i'd been wondering this myself. didn't really want to mess around with heating the pickle up (as I make my jewellery at home, and don't have a dedicated space as such). It was only last night I read in a book that heating the pickle isn't necessary, just takes a little bit longer

**The Dragon** · 12-10-2009, 11:56 AM

Thanks for the tip about baking soda, I spend quite a bit of time rinsing my stuff. Am I right in thinking you use cold water for this? Will tap water do or is it better to use distilled?

God there is so much to learn - I think I need another brain! lol

**amazingbabe** · 12-10-2009, 12:08 PM

I don;t heat my pickle at all and never have.....

Yes it still works

**Dano** · 12-10-2009, 02:00 PM

on this subject, i dunno if it's just my local one or national, but asda have got a ceramic bowl slow cooker in with a low temperature setting for £7 right now

**Bigwol** · 13-10-2009, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Boo

I often leave items in my cold citric acid pickle ovenight - especially copper - you come down in a morning to lovely clean pink copper. It just works faster when warm.

If you pickle a lot of copper and it discolours the pickle, silver will take on a pale pink tinge from it. The answer to which is to not use old dirty pickle for silver pieces if you've done a lot of copper in it. It does plate it more rapidly, as posted, if you put something ferrous in too.

Granulation - something else hard to do!

Old pickle containing a lot of copper is very useful for granulation, it can be used to deliberately plate the tiny fine silver silver balls with sufficient copper to enable eutectic bonding to take place in the granulation process.

If you want hours of frustration, I can recommend granulation as a fine way of whiling away those winter evenings!

For more info see here -

[Ganoksin] Jewelry Making - - Theory and Practice of Goldsmithing - Granulation

**Di Sandland** · 13-10-2009, 11:57 AM

Probably very naughty of me but when confronted with a thin silver seam of solder in a copper toggle clasp, I bunged it in old pickle (it had gone blue with what I imagined to be copper from sterling). The theory was that it would plate the silver solder to match the copper. It did.

**Boo** · 13-10-2009, 12:17 PM

I've done the same myself Di - I keep a jar of very blue pickle used with copper just for the task, but haven't found it worth doing - by the time I oxidise and polish, the very thin layer, which wasn't good to start with, was polished off.