Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I used this to restore my very fine, delicate, silver jewelry, that is, with surfaces, beads and parts that are too tiny to be polished successfully with creams, treated cloths, etc. The product does work, but not as well as I had hoped on heavily tarnished items, two or more treatments is required to make those wearable again. I followed the directions, any from my experiences, I have the following tips to offer: 1. Put a fine strainer over the sink drain, just in case; 2. The sachet floats up when the boiling water is poured, so have a couple heavy sterling spoons handy to push it back down, and move any displaced items back in contact with it; 3. Have two plastic dishpans ready - one with hot soapy water for washing items after treatment, one with plain hot rinse water; 4. Have a fine strainer ready for final draining and a clean, dry towel to place rinsed items on; and 5. I left the jewelry in the solution for 10 minutes, not 5 as in the directions, and got better results; it is a chemical reaction and one can see the bubbling action and the tarnish forming a gray scum on top of the solution. After about 10 minutes, most of the action is done, so I removed the items so that the tarnish would not redeposit. Because it is a chemical reaction, it's really important not to introduce any other metals to the solution, even stainless steel. It is safe for glass beads and relatively inert or siliceous gems or mineral beads like all forms of quartz, garnet, etc. As a geologist, though, I wouldn't recommend risking it with soft minerals, or less inert ones, like pearl, coral, opal or turquoise, malachite. Or you could remove one bead from the back and test it in your next batch, if you don't know what it's made out of. I hope these tips help! I think this type of product ("silver dip") is really the only way to make heavily tarnished silver items presentable again, and this is the best I've tried, probably partly because of the heat added by the boiling water. I recommend it and am looking forward to trying in on my sterling utensils.