How To Clean Iron Pyrite
Iron pyrite cleaning help i cleaned off a couple of the largest ones through elbow grease alone before donating them to a local museum for display along with the couple others that was rusted over.
How to clean iron pyrite. Once there is significant surface damage from acid the luster cannot be restored. Little knots between the beads to act as spacers may help like you will often see with pearls. Then neutralize them in a mixture of water and baking soda or ammonia. Once the piece dries thoroughly you can soak it in high strength isopropyl alcohol to kill any bacteria then let that dry thoroughly. Discard the salt after you do this.
If you don t want to bury your pyrite in salt because you don t want it to get dirty you can place salt in a bag and set over your crystal for a few hours or overnight. Cleansing pyrite with smoke such as smudging is probably the most effective way to cleanse pyrite. After a good scrub rinse throughly in water and look at the shine on your specimen. Ive been using it for months with fantastic results. This can take from 30 minutes to several hours.
If you are wearing pyrite beads on a string and they are rubbing together and constantly producing the dust you can try cleaning and then restringing them to prevent the problem. The name pyrite comes from the greek work puritēs which means of fire this is because before there were metals such as steel pyrite in its natural state was used to strike against each other to produce sparks that would start a fire. The best way to use salt to cleanse pyrite is to bury it in a bowl of sea salt for 4 hours 8 hours or overnight. You might try softscrub on a soft toothbrush. Click to see full answer.
Let the pyrites stand in this solution until they have reached the brightness you wish. In just about a minute your color will come back it doesn t take much to remove the oxide surface. I was just wondering the easiest way to clean the rust off the others for the museum and when i can get back to mine more. Remove the pyrites again using rubber gloves and rinse them in running water.