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mbrowne1229
(449 points)
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I remember reading a while back the differences between the different tarnishes, like the brown tarnish, the black tarnish, and the ease of removal.
Will someone fill me in on this?
Also, is the black stuff that develops on the downside of the lip plate tarnish or is my saliva eating away at the silver? What about the random black marks on my footjoint (it's like a black ring and silver in the middle... MY FLUTE HAS RINGWORM!!!)?
Curiosity just got the best of me!
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Micron
(1480 points)
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Silver reacts with something in your skin, or your breath, or your saliva, or the atmosphere, or fumes from materials in the case, etc, etc to make various silver compounds, often involving sulphur.
Many silver compounds gradually turn brown or black on exposure to light. Sometimes first brown then black. This is why they are used in photography.
When you remove the tarnish, you are removing what used to be silver, so yes, tarnish eats away at the silver. n Once you have a good layer of tarnish, if you can live with it, it protects the underlying silver from tarnish attack.
If your embouchure plate is tarnishing, it is likely that some ingredient in a skin cosmetic or acne preparation is reacting with the silver.
Some silver tarnish is very superficial and easy to remove, while some is deep into the surface.
For "solid silver" flutes, manufacturing processes can leave a grey look deep into the surface of the silver. It is called "fire scale". Google will tell you more... http://www.google.co.nz/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIG_enNZ218NZ218&q=%22fire+scale%22+silver
One common solution is to silver plate over this, to cover the grey, although when a silver flute is silver plated in this way, it is not normally mentioned in the specs.
The more you polish, the more you remove the silver plating, and leave the underlying grey silver. This could account for a grey ring. This would be the case for sure, if the more you polish the area, the larger the ring gets.
It would take a lot of polishing for this to happen by using non-aggressive silver polishes made by reputable brand names. However if you use a polish such as Flitz which claims to polish hard metals such as stainless steel, chrome, and nickel, then you will wear through silver plating very quickly.
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mbrowne1229
(449 points)
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These rings come up even when you don't polish your flute? I don't think I've polished my flute since I've gotten it. I've wiped fingerprints off here and there (mostly because it was getting crusty) but would that create the ring? I'll take a picture of it. Maybe that might help.
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vampav8trix
(296 points)
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I was always a little disappointed with my silver headjoint that it had some faint black rings. Now I feel much better.
Thanks for the explaination.
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Micron
(1480 points)
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As a kid I used to play with mercury. There were tiny specks of it spilt on my bed. I used to keep my flute on my bed at times - good way to get it sat on! The mercury specks combined with the silver to make amalgam. That was whitish patches on my flute. I'm lucky the mercury did not dissolve holes right through the flute.
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