Why did all of my vintage flatware tarnish at once?

January 6, 2021 2:34 PM

So my household has used a combination of non-matching vintage flatware + nonfancy nonvintage flatware forever. After years of this stuff holding up super well, in a short burst all of our vintage stuff became mottled and somewhat gross-looking. The contemporary pieces are fine. What happened? Can I reverse it?

My vintage flatware is a mix of old hotel surplus stuff, garage sale finds, random one-offs that someone gave me, etc. We have used it nonstop, tossed it in the dishwasher, never treated anything special. Haven't changed the dishwasher, haven't changed our dish soap (Trader Joe's in the sink, Finish tablets in the dishwasher). But suddenly all the vintage stuff is a mottled gray that appears "tarnished" -- though I don't know if this kind of strong silverware, made for heavy usage, can actually tarnish; it's certainly not actual silver.

When I say suddenly I mean one day in the last few months I looked down and realized one looked dull and tarnished, and just assumed it was dirty or whatever. And then a week later, pawing through the silverware drawer, I realized it was all of it.

No amount of scrubbing changes the look, though I haven't tried any special products. What should I do? I'd hate to get rid of this stuff, but it's rather unpleasant to look at, that's for sure, which kind of defeats the purpose of having cool and funky old silverware in the first place.

posted by BlahLaLa to Home & Garden (20 answers total)

A quick Google turned this up - might be worth a try?
posted by Chairboy at 3:27 PM on January 6, 2021

No answer for why, but this Speed Dip instant silver cleaner makes it easy to fix.
posted by ShooBoo at 4:09 PM on January 6, 2021

That is, Speed Dip works well for actual silver, not stainless steel. But if it's tarnished, it's possible it's actually silver.
posted by ShooBoo at 4:31 PM on January 6, 2021

It's definitely not real silver, so take my word "tarnish" with a grain of salt. It's messed up, but it's probably not actual tarnish.
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:49 PM on January 6, 2021

Can you post some photos? Oxidation and scale and other patinas come in an astonishing variety. Also the photos will help us determine what materials are most likely, or if there is a spread.

Hot take with too little info: something changed in your water supply, perhaps just for a few wash cycles, and this radically speeded mineral deposition on the stuff that was covered in a billion microscratches, but not the stuff that's only a decade old and has much less fine-scale wear.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:51 PM on January 6, 2021

Okay here are some images. 1 new spoon + vintage spoons; 1 new fork + vintage forks. All used to be a reasonably similar shade of silver until the vintage stuff got wrecked.
posted by BlahLaLa at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2021

I've had that happen with silverware that had what appeared to be a very thin silver coating on it but which was not all silver. No stamp. I never did figure out how to get rid of the tarnish on it; my favorite aluminum foil-and-baking-soda-and-hot-water trick (that is, combine all three and toss the silver in; make sure the silver is in contact with the aluminum and wait) that I use to clean all-silver didn't do much for this stuff. I ended up giving it to Goodwill. It happened sort of like you describe. One day I looked in the drawer and the pieces in question had gone all mottled. Sorry not to have a better answer.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 6:13 PM on January 6, 2021

Try this .
posted by SageTrail at 7:12 PM on January 6, 2021

This is just a guess but that really looks like an effect of the “pickle” solution I used to use making jewelry many years ago. Silver and other metals went into a warm bath of strong vinegar to remove the oxidation that happened during brazing. They all seemed to come out with that same pale coppery haze. I only remember removing the residue with super fine steel wool or sandpaper but I was poking around and one site just now that suggested hydrogen peroxide.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:13 PM on January 6, 2021

are you running this stuff through your dishwasher, and have your recently changed detergents? Vintage flatware may not hold up well to modern dishwashers and detergents
posted by cosmicbandito at 8:39 PM on January 6, 2021

When we moved and used a brand new dishwasher, this same thing occurred. Same liquid soap we used before, same water supply in town. Maybe it’s the washer?
posted by artdrectr at 8:58 PM on January 6, 2021

Those pictures look like my silver plate to me. They are not stainless like the new stuff. Seriously, try polishing.
posted by SLC Mom at 9:03 PM on January 6, 2021

We use a motley collection of mismatched vintage silverware that we run through the dishwasher, too. I find that all of a sudden everything looks grotty- it’s mostly because I failed to notice the slow build up of tarnish. I just resign myself to polishing all of the pieces once every year or so.
posted by sarajane at 4:39 AM on January 7, 2021

Don't use the aluminum foil-and-baking-soda-and-hot-water approach - you remove silver each time you do that leading to pitting and with silver plate ultimately removing the plating. Use something like Wright's silver cream. One thing that will help going forward is to separate silver and stainless in your dishwasher - we put silver in one side of utensil tray and stainless in the other - that limits tarnishing. Also if you line your silverware drawer with some of the tarnish retarding felt (can probably get at a hardware store or online) it will help slow tarnishing down.
posted by leslies at 5:48 AM on January 7, 2021

The vintage stuff looks like silver plate to me. Something happened to tarnish it. Tarnish is caused by exposure to sulfur-containing gasses. Assuming nothing has changed about the air quality in your local area, common household sources of sulfur dioxide include tobacco smoke, improperly or inadequately vented gas appliances, gas or kerosene heaters, wood or coal stoves, automobile exhaust from attached garages, and malfunctioning chimneys. Any of these ring a bell?

Scrubbing and washing will not remove tarnish. Get some polishing cloth and rub the flatware with it. If the discoloration goes away, it’s tarnish.
posted by slkinsey at 6:32 AM on January 7, 2021

First, the good news - that is just a patina of tarnish and will be trivial to address. And that means it's time to polish your silverware.

My shiny bits method:

1. Use gloves.
2. Feel fancy and play some classical music or jazz while you embark on some prettying up your kit.
3. Wenol brand polish is excellent, and a good balance between effort and output and cost. The trade off here is polish that requires less effort is usually more aggressive in removing metal, and less aggressive entails spending your life polishing. Wenol is a bit industrial, Wrights is also fine for fine silver.
4. Rags. Any old set of polish rags works about the same, and while I prefer the two stage with proper polish cloth approach, but start with wenol on a cotton rag and then rub it off with another cotton rag. An old toothbrush can be handy.
5. Hand wash the cutlery after you polish and really dry them.

Any recipe with an acid, like coke or vinegar in it is actively removing silver and should be avoided. Those chemicals are fine for a quick fix for gear that isn't plated or long term durability aren't concerns. Soaking in hot water, any salt water baths or using baking soda in any form are also often recommended and these are all very destructive, especially for the types of silver in vintage work. Worse, I don't think aren't even particularly effective for the task. Just use polish.

You can use wenal on anything you want to polish - but if you go down that rabbit hole you should avoid cross contamination so use/label/discard separate rags for the different materials.

As for why did they tarnish? Your metal likely contains copper, and the most likely chemical reaction was that copper with moisture. It doesn't even need to be water, it can come from high humidity, or the storage got wet or just not properly drying after use. Both silver and copper react with various sulfides, like those found in air pollution and many cleaning products, which can also cause tarnishing, blackening and other color changes. From the pictures it looks like a light patina from storage, but it can also just form over time. So even if you go all out and store with desiccants or cloth storage that just slows the chemical process down.
posted by zenon at 9:49 AM on January 7, 2021

Any chance your water chemistry shifted? Any change in municipal water source?
posted by childofTethys at 1:54 PM on January 7, 2021

I agree those look like silverplate (I worked in a shop that bought and sold lots of precious metals). Don't wash them in the dishwasher with stainless steel. Detergent causes the silver ions to dissociate from the silver when it's washed with stainless, and these marks can't usually be removed with polishing. The pinkish looking areas (if that's not camera weirdness) can be copper showing through the layer of silver. You could try polishing and see if they clean up.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:49 PM on January 7, 2021

Okay, you've convinced me to try silver polish so I shall.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:46 PM on January 10, 2021

Okay, well it took a whopping 10 seconds to prove that you guys were completely correct. Silver polish was the answer. We happened to have two different types on hand, so Mr. BlahLaLa and I went to town. My strategy was to give everything a decent-enough scrub. His is to give each piece a long and devoted polish. Meaning, I did 90% of it and he's still working on the rest but hey our vintage silver pieces are looking beautifully vintage, not like trash. Thank you!
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:30 PM on January 10, 2021