How to Clean Gold Chains

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chuck Koehler with Anthony Jewelers in Nashville in Tennessee and the question was how to clean gold chains, I'm going to show you how we do it. Alright, in order to clean a gold necklace, you're basically going to need a couple of things. One, first and foremost soap, just regular dish washing soap, toothbrush and an end brush. And a product I like to use a lot, it's called Tarn-X, which you can buy in almost any grocery store and in it's the cleaning aisle. And most people find it beside the Brasso. So what I'm going to do to clean this, the first thing I'm going to do, is I'm just pour some Tarn-X in a jar. And I'm just going to put it in there and swish it around for a minute. And what Tarn-X is going to do, is remove any oxidation on the piece. And gold does oxidize, not as readily as silver but it does oxidize. And with Tarn-X, you don't want to leave things in Tarn-X really long because it's a very caustic chemical. So you want to pull it out and rinse it. Now what we're doing, is just very simple, we're trying to break the surface tension that is holding the dirt to this gold chain. And we're going to use just basically, a toothbrush, some soap and water. And we're just going to go in here and scrub it and it's really that simple, there's not a real big mystery. You want to be careful because you know, it's a delicate piece of jewelry and you don't want to break something. But for the most part, all you're trying to do is basically break the surface tension that is holding the two molecules together. And a toothbrush and soap and water, and soap and water in and about itself, is what is known as a surface tension reduction agent. And a toothbrush, is what is known as a surface tension reduction agent applicator, how about that? Then let's just rinse it off, get all the soap out of it, and dry it in a paper towel. And in a nutshell, that's how you clean a gold chain."