Cleaning or resurfacing amber

[ap Dafydd]

My wife has two strings of very expensive amber. Unfortunately she got water on both strings which left them both dead and looking as if the surface had been stripped off them.

Cany anyone give advice on how to treat these necklaces and get the glow back into this beautiful resin?

gwyn eich byd

Ffred

[Ahautenites]

Wear a nice, soft white tee shirt and sit with them in your lap to watch a long movie. As you watch the movie, polish and "tumble" the stones through your shirt.

The alternative would be to put them in a rock tumbler with some very fine sand and tumble them that way for however long it takes to polish them again.

[fireswimmer]

I am not sure that I would tumble them in a rock tumbler. Amber can be rather fragile and you would not want to polish away too much of the actual stone. That has been known to happen with turquoise. I like the idea of the shirt. I would also wonder about using a little bit of oil. I might think about trying a little biut of olive oil or other quality oil and see how it does with the resin.

[Ahautenites]

**nods** That's why I said very fine sand. I'm not sure how long it would take, but I'd be constantly checking on them to make sure no damage was being done, so I'd probably end up taking six times as long out of sheer caution. But you're right about amber being rather fragile, and I like the idea of using oil on them. Just make sure to rub it into them and get off all the excess, otherwise, you'll just get a sticky mess instead.

[ap Dafydd]

Tried oil on one of the strings and it worked perfectly. But the other one it didn't. Tried polishing the beads and the string broke...

I took it back to the shop today and asked them if they could do anything, the lady who does the repairs said she uses Brasso!

Cawn weld.

gwyn eich byd

Ffred