How do you remove tarnish from silver?
How do you polish silver?
Those are great questions, and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, there are lots of house cleaners that go to customers' houses,
and they either upsell special services,
or the customers ask them for special services,
like can you polish my silver?
And what product on the market do you recommend?
Now, there's a variety of different ways to polish silver.
Today we're going to talk about one of them.
The one that we're going to talk about uses a product called Tarn-X.
Now, Tarn-X is the number one bestselling product on the market
for removing tarnish from silver.
The reason it's the number one is because it's been around for over 50 years,
and it's really well known.
It's readily available everywhere.
It's available in all of your drugstores and stores like Lowe's and Walmart.
So it's easily accessible, and it's 5 to $6 for a bottle this size.
Now, there are some things that you need to be aware of, and I'm not judging the product.
I want you to decide that for yourself, but we will go over the SDS breakdown, and then
I will show you how to use it.
Then you can make a decision for yourself.
But if a customer asks you, "Can you polish my silver?"
I want you to at least have this option in your back pocket.
All right, the first thing that we need to be aware of is that
there are two types of metals.
The first type is a heavy metal.
It's a heavy metal, determined on its density and its chemical behavior.
That would be gold, silver, platinum, and copper.
Those are heavy metals.
There are lighter metals, like magnesium, aluminum, and titanium, and we're only going
to use the Tarn-X on the heavy metals.
This is a heavy chemical for heavy metals.
All right, now I'm going to spend just a couple of minutes, and we're going to go over the
SDS breakdown, which is the safety data sheet.
Every single company, by law, has to have a safety data sheet available.
This one is available to you, and it hides nothing.
The very first thing is, who is the company behind it?
The company is Jelmar Inc.
They're a 50-year-old company, and now it's third generation, and it's run by Alison,
who's the daughter.
It's a woman-owned company now, so boo-yah.
It's also the same company that creates CLR, which is a calcium, lime, and rust remover,
which is also a very strong chemical.
So that you can be aware of.
All right, the hazards.
The hazards are clearly marked on the back label of the jar.
If you buy the jar, and you forget about the SDS sheets, everything you know to stay safe
is on the back label of the container.
I'm very happy about that, and proud of Jelmar for actually being very honest in their advertising.
The product does have sulfamic acid in it, and that is a changing agent that becomes
explosive when mixed with other chemicals.
Now, in this form it's okay to use, but we do not want to mix this product, Tarn-X, with
any other polishing agents or any other chemicals whatsoever.
We're not going to mix it with anything.
The other agent that it has in it is thiourea, and that is an organic compound, which is
like urea, but it has instead of an oxygen atom, it has been swapped out with a sulfur atom.
All right, now for the first aid measures.
We want to protect our eyes, our nose, our mouth, and our skin when using this product.
It can be irritating to any of those, so we want to protect ourselves.
We will use personal protective equipment while we do the polishing.
The next thing, firefighting measures.
It is not flammable by itself, but if you mix it with other things, like I mentioned
before, it can become explosive.
By itself, it's not flammable, so we just want to use it by itself.
That's the only way we want to use it.
All right, accidental releases.
If it spills, there are no special rules for cleaning it up.
You can just use a damp cloth or a sponge.
So that's easy, right?
Handling and storage.
It is a chemical.
This is a chemical that needs to be stored in a cool dry place and away from heat, and
you want to keep the lid on at all times.
You want to keep it airtight and away from children and pets.
We do want to use this in a ventilated area.
The next thing that we want to talk about is our personal protective equipment.
This falls under the exposure controls.
Now, we want to protect ourselves, because we're a house cleaner, and we get to do lots
of this on a day-to-day basis.
Now, because of the nature of the product, we're not going to be doing a lot of silver polishing.
It's a very rare occasion that happens for special projects, but we are going to protect
ourselves, and here's how we're going to do it.
The first thing that we're going to do is, we're going to put on our mask.
This mask just goes over your ears, and you pinch it at the top so that it closes this
space at the top, and then you pull it down over your chin.
This is the proper way to wear this unit.
We're going to wear this, just to protect our mouths and our breathing from fumes.
We're also going to wear gloves.
These are just nitrile gloves, and they're disposable gloves, and we're going to use
them just in case any of the mixture comes in contact with our hands.
Again, it says protect your skin.
These disposable gloves will allow us to do that.
Now, it doesn't say anything at all about eye protection, but just because I'm uber-careful,
I'm going to protect my eyes with my safety goggles as well.
That way if anything splashes up in my face, I've got my mask on, and I've got my goggles
on, and at least my eyes are protected.
This is optional, but I highly recommend it.
The next thing that is optional, but I highly recommend, is my apron.
The reason I do this is it protects my uniform in case anything should splash on me as well.
All right, the physical reactivity.
What you're looking for in this dark container is something that looks like water.
It's clear, with a slightly hazy tint to it, and it has a very strong chemical odor.
When you pour it out, that's what you're expecting.
It's stable under all conditions, except if you mix it with something else, and if you
mix it with something else, it becomes a completely different product.
So do not mix this with anything else.
As far as the toxicological information, it is not toxic if you ingest it orally, accordance
to the FHSA and the CPSC guidelines.
Now, you're not going to ingest it for any reason, but if you do, those are the guidelines
that you're following.
All right, ecological information.
It is biodegradable, but it is not good for fish.
Do not get this near fish or your fish tank.
The regulatory guidelines for transportation, it is regulated by the Department of Transportation,
so if you're going on a job, and you're going to carry this with you, it cannot go in your
carry-on luggage.
You cannot take it with you.
But you can check it in your checked luggage that goes at the back of the airplane in the
cargo bin.
Just so that you're aware of that.
It has one of these safety lids, so that you've got to mash the lid down to turn it, otherwise
it won't open.
That is to protect this from spilling, either in an airplane or in your cleaning caddy if
it gets dumped over.
It won't leak in your car, because of the lid.
It's also a safety precaution against children, so that if children for some reason try to
open this up, they're going to have a heck of a time.
So boo-yah to Jelmar for taking extra safety precautions to keep this product safe from
people who are not supposed to be getting into it.
Alrighty, before I show you how to polish the silver, I want to show you my work smart
not hard tools.
Now, the reason I want to do this is so that you don't show up to a customer's house, and
you don't have the proper tools with you.
The first thing that I want you to do is think cotton.
Cotton is going to be our key when polishing silver.
We want to stay away from all wood products that are like paper products, paper towels,
newspaper, stuff like that.
Those are made of recycled wood, and the wood fibers can actually scratch the surface of
silver, which is a very soft metal.
We want to stay away from all paper products, and we're only going to use cotton.
The first thing that we want to do is, we want to take a cotton towel with us.
The towels, we're going to be using after we wash the silver.
Then we're going to dry them off with a cotton towel.
Then we're going to polish the silver, we're going to wash it again, and dry it off with
a cotton towel.
Then we're going to take the cotton towel, and we're going to polish the silver as a
final polishing before we're done.
One thing that we are going to use is, we're going to use a sponge.
The sponge does not have a scrubby on it.
This is just a sponge.
When this is wet, this is what we'll use to actually wash the soap and the polish off,
but the scrubby will scratch the silver, so a sponge with no scrubby.
Then we have a couple of cotton products that we're going to take with us, just because
the intricacies of the silver will vary from piece to piece.
We're going to take some cotton swabs with us, and this will allow us to put the Tarn-X
directly on the cotton swab, directly on the silver.
Another thing we're going to take with us are cotton pads.
These are makeup remover pads, and depending on the surface, this might be a better choice.
Another thing we're going to take with us are some Q-tips.
Because sometimes we need to get in small nooks and crannies, a Q-tip is perfect, and
it has the cotton tip.
And then not cotton is a very soft nylon toothbrush.
Now, this is not our regular cleaning brush, but this is a toothbrush, so that we can get
in the nooks and crannies by dipping this inside the solution.
All right, now before we begin, there's a hard fast rule that you need to know about
using Tarn-X.
Once you put the Tarn-X on the silver, you do not want it to stay on the silver for longer
than two minutes.
Two minutes is your time limit, and if you're not done, wash the thing, dry it off, and
start over again.
So two minutes, it's got a two-minute limit.
Alrighty, those are the things that you need to be aware of and things that you need to
just keep in the back of your mind as you do your polishing silver.
Let's go take a look.
Let's give it a try, and see exactly how it works, shall we?
Now, if you're listening to the podcast right now, what you can't see is that we've taken
a soft bath towel, and we've laid it on top of the counter, where we are using it as our
workstation for the polishing of the silver.
We've dipped a cotton swab inside the Tarn-X, and we're brushing it now on a small silver
platter that is badly tarnished, and we're watching it as it amazingly transforms itself
into a nice, almost brand new-looking, silver platter.
Around the edges, there is some difficulty with the tarnish coming off, and we're going
to have to dip our brush or our Q-tips inside the Tarn-X, so that we can get those edges.
Now, just a little bit of extra elbow grease might be all that's required in order to get
some of the tarnish off this platter, but you will see that there are some smudges and
some scratches that are just from age or what have you on this platter, and so it's going
to take a little bit of TLC.
You want to give yourself some time to do this.
And again, we're working in the two-minute time constraint, so before this is finished,
we're going to end up rinsing this and washing this a couple of times, so that the Tarn-X
doesn't sit and dwell too long on this platter.
Now, I have taped up all of the silver pieces that we're going to be cleaning today, and
I taped them right down the middle with painter's tape,
so that you could see the before and after.
What we're looking at right now is an amazing before and after of this silver platter.
All right, now we've rinsed and washed and dried the platter, and we're coming back for
a second round.
When you bid a job for a customer, you have to give yourself plenty of time to do the
second and the third round, because on a lot of commercials and stuff that you see, people
only clean it once and then it's magically transformed.
But the reality is, it usually takes two or three passes before you're going to get it
to meet your standard of excellence,
so build in the time that it's going to take to actually
do the job correctly, because your referrals are going to be based on
how well of a job you did.
You don't want it to be sloppy, and you don't want to give the customer back something that's
not quite complete or that it didn't work out properly.
So give yourself plenty of time to do the job correctly.
In this particular silver cleaning session, we are cleaning a gravy container, and we're
cleaning a goblet that is busted in half.
It's a his and hers version, and then combined together it creates the whole goblet.
Then we have a Christmas bell.
The Christmas bell is giving me a bit of a trouble with the top of it, where it connects
to the little part that hangs on.
It had some kind of a little, I don't know, glass piece or something that looked like
mistletoe, and it was hard to get underneath that.
So we're going to end up using both Q-tips and a toothbrush to try to get underneath
that before I actually end up taking it apart, because I'm unable to get the tarnish off
underneath that connector piece.
But you'll see that even inside all of these different pieces, even with the second pass,
the silver is starting to really shine up.
What we're looking at now is actually the third pass on this little gravy container,
and it does have lots of smudges from food over the years and fingerprints and things
that have oxidized, and the more we polish it, the nicer it looks.
But we have had two minutes on it, and then we rinsed it, two more minutes, rinsed it,
and now we're on the third section of two minutes.
Like I say, this little gravy container is taking us six to eight minutes already, just
for this particular piece of silver.
It's not taking a long time, it's just that we need to make sure that we give ourselves
plenty of time in order to, like I say, do the job correctly.
Now we're rinsing all of the silver.
We've had two minutes on each of these individual items, and now we're rinsing it.
This is after the third pass, so it took us three passes in order for us to get all of
the different corners and little tiny intricacies of the silver polished.
And now it's looking pretty good.
Now that we're doing the final rinse, I'm rinsing it just in soapy water, and then I'm
rinsing it with clear water.
Then I'm going to go ahead and dry it off, and if there are any smudges left, we're going
to do a little bit of extra polishing, so that we can polish it and buff it up really
nice before we give it back to the customer.
All right, now as we're doing our final drying, I do see a few smudges here, and we're just
going to give it a little bit of extra elbow grease with our cotton cloth.
That's just going to polish it up really nicely, and it's going to leave no fingerprints and
no smudges, nothing that is not show-ready.
This looks amazing, and you would never know that something so simple as Tarn-X could transform
and give brand new life to an old tarnished black silver.
Now, no product review would be complete without a before and after of the silver.
Right now we've gone back, and we've taken a look at the silver with all of the oxidizing
and the fingerprints and the tarnish and the scratches and all the stuff that we're looking
at from these before pictures of the platter and the gravy container, the little his and
hers goblet and the Christmas bell and the knife.
But when we look at the finished product, and those of you that are in your car, and
you're listening to the podcast, you can't see what we're seeing, so I'm going to leave
links in the show notes to this video so you can go back and look at the before and after,
because it is stunning.
If you are to produce these kinds of results for your clients, your clients would not only
hire you back, but then they're going to refer you to their friends,
who also have silver to polish.
This is a great way to upsell to a customer who has silver, or they're got a china cabinet
full of silver, or they have Christmas platters or things like this for special holidays.
Now, I'll give you a hint.
The holidays are a really slow time.
Leading up to the holidays, a lot of people will cancel on you, but if you can upsell
your services to something like this, it is a no-brainer, and you're going to get hired
back year after year to do this same process.
Now you have the tools, and you know how to do it.
Alrighty, so now we've had a chance to take a look at Tarn-X.
We've given it a try.
We've read the SDS sheet.
We've learned all about it.
We've learned about the work smart not hard tools.
And it does exactly what it says it's supposed to do.
I'm going to give Tarn-X the Savvy Cleaner Seal of Approval, and I really would like
to say high five for putting all of the information on the back, so that you can read the instructions
and remind yourself before you use it.
Now if a customer asks you, "Can you come clean my silver?" this is another product
you can put inside your cleaning caddy.
Now, I want to hear your feedback.
Do you use Tarn-X?
And if you don't, what do you use instead?
Let's start a conversation in the notes below.
Until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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