How to Clean Rhinestone Jewelry

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chuck Koehler, Anthony Jewelers in Nashville, Tennessee and I'm here to show you how to clean rhinestone jewelry. To clean rhinestone jewelry, you need basically three things: soap, a toothbrush and water. The biggest problem that you're going to encounter when it comes to cleaning rhinestone jewelry is what is called the yellowing effect on these pieces because if you look at this brand new kit that I have; all of the rhinestones in here are very bright white and you'll notice that when they're flipped over on their back that they're gold; that is a foil. Okay. And the foil is nothing more than a reflective type material that is glued to the back of the rhinestone and a lot of rhinestones are also called foil backs. Now if you'll notice with this piece that I have that they're, that they're very yellow. Well, what happen over the course of the last fifty years that a lot of the rhinestones that were made back in the 30's, 40's and 50's the glue that holds the foil to the crystal has deteriorated and turns yellow and will never really come clean. You'll never going to get that yellow out of it and turn it white again unless you replace it with a brand new rhinestone or a new foil back. The only way to really clean one of these is just put some soap and water in a dish and just take a toothbrush and literally, this is all you're trying to do, is basically just remove surface dirt. You're never going to change that yellow back to the bright white and that's something a lot of people get, get all frustrated with when they're trying to clean old custom jewelry and old rhinestone pieces that they can't get them clean and literally, you are getting it clean and then you just rinse it off and you want to do it a couple of times. You have to understand how cleaning works. There is something called surface tension and the dirt that's on a piece of jewelry is held at the molecular level; the dirt and the jewelry molecule are bound together with a phenomenon known as surface tension. So the piece will never come clean until you break the surface tension between the dirt and the jewelry. But if a piece is really dirty and soiled, as you scrub it with a toothbrush, what you're doing is you're breaking the surface tension between one layer of dirt and another layer of dirt. Just remember it's not a race to clean this. A lot of people just think they can do it in just a second and it's over. Now in a jewelry store, we tend to do it a little faster because our equipment was designed to break the surface tension down; you know; all the way from the, between the jewelry and the dirt. But at home you just don't have that ability to do it quickly; but you have the ability to do it. And so, like I said, you just want very carefully take a toothbrush and just regular soap and water and reduce the surface tension and it's going to come out clean. It is much prettier than it started; but once again, it still has that yellowing effect and you're not going to be able to change that. But it's a very pretty piece and it's going to look good when you go out to dinner tonight. And that's how you clean rhinestone jewelry."