Keeping Your Silver Perfect: How to Polish Your Silver.
If you wash your silver (flatware and serving pieces) with any regularity, this will virtually eliminate tarnish. Hand washing is strongly recommended.
At Feinberg Silver, we have been in the silver business (sterling silver, fine quality silver plate and genuine antique English silver) for over 75 years and are experts in our field. The pleasure of owning fine silver requires some work to keep your silver in pristine condition. While silver scratches and can develop a “patina” with age, this adds to the beauty of the piece. We keep our showroom silver and silver antiques in pristine condition with a minimum of effort. Using the following tips, your Feinberg English Silver will look great and last generations. Here are our tips:
Tarnish is the Enemy: Feinberg Silver comes from the finest English silversmiths and also, to a lesser degree, from the best Italian silver craftsmen. All English silver, sterling silver or silver plate, can tarnish as these silver pieces are not treated with a “lacquer” or finish. Tarnish is an oxidation process that can turn shiny silver dull and leave a dark film. Italian silver is often treated with a finish (lacquer) to prevent tarnish. Any silver that is finished with a lacquer, should not tarnish but we still suggest regular polishing with a treated cloth boss (see below). However, any product that is used for food service cannot be treated and, therefore can tarnish.
How To Prevent Tarnish: At Feinberg Silver, our first defense is a regular wiping of the silver with an inexpensive treated cloth, available at virtually any hardware store. We use “Blitz,” an excellent silver cleaning cloth/glove. If you polish your silver this way every 6-8 weeks, the wiping creates friction that removes the tarnish and creates the shine.
A Typical "Blitz" Polishing Mitts Box (taken from www.blitzinc.net)
Importantly, if you are polishing silver plate, you want to avoid using an abrasive silver polish or chemical solution. This wears down the silver plate coating and can penetrate the base metal. Feinberg silver plate is very a high quality silver plate and is plated to 10+ microns (a commercial level) while much of the less expensive silver plate (from India and Asia) has a very thin silver plate coating and will quickly wear away.
If you wash your silver (flatware and serving pieces) with any regularity, this will virtually eliminate tarnish. Hand washing is strongly recommended.
Removing Tarnish: However, there are situations when tarnish appears and when a silver glove/cloth cannot do the job. As noted previously, be careful as silver polish is an abrasive that will wear away silver plate (but it will not wear away sterling silver).
Here are our suggestions:
1. For small tarnish spots, white toothpaste is very effective. Just rub some on the spot and clean.
2. We recommend Blitz Silver Care Polish for tougher jobs or large pieces. Blitz is available in most hardware stores and is not as abrasive as many of the chemical dips yet is very effective.
Fine silver can be repaired and silver plate can be replated to look like new. If you have questions about your sterling silver and silver plate, please feel free to contact us.
