FORMBY'S BUILD-UP REMOVER
I found this in the hardware department of Wal-mart. I think it was around $4-.
Worth a shot I guess.
Formby's Deep Cleansing Build-Up Remover. Cleans away dirt and gently dissolves wax buildup. Might be useful for Renwax too.
Dissolves dirt, dust and wax build-up... and leaves behind a pleasant winterfresh scent!
Figure at the very least, I can use it around the house.
I doubt it will be a "good" result, but there's only one way to find out!
One small coin is lightly dirty. The other little one and the Byzantine have some thick corrosion in spots. The other is what I term as "normal" uncleaned- just regular run of the mill dirt obscuring the coin.
After a couple hours, discernable dirt has been removed. The Byzantine and bottom right coins are starting to show nice detail. Encrustation is softening on the top two coins. Bottom left coin showing no difference... may be a cull.
Soaked overnight. No discernable change. Perhaps the chemical has been "spent". Going to soak it until afterwork or tomorrow. I'll update with pics tonight or tomorrow.
No change again... chemical must have been spent. Coins somewhat darker and have an oily feel to them. Here's a scan (been about 30 hours soaking). Changing liquid and resoaking. Smells nice too!
Soaked 2 more days. More dirt has been removed, but I think distilled water is faster. This may be a good pre-soaker... soaking coins in it overnight before moving to distilled water. For now, I'm calling this one done.

 

Back to table of experiments
 
 
1