when jewelry tarnishes..?

Question: is it from the oil on your skin or from the metal itself. in other words, if you clean off the tarnish, will the jewelry get unnoticeably smaller[b/c pieces of it are coming off] or stay the same because you are only cleaning away the oil that has gotten onto it?

Answer: CLEANING and POLISHING are two different processes. Cleaning, which is what you are doing to remove the tarnish, will not remove more than a minute amount of the sterling silver that is part of the jewelry. Polishing, which is what brings out the high shine on a piece of jewelry, is the process of removing scratches--even scratches so small that your eyes cannot perceive them as scratches. Polishing will remove a minute bit of metal, but if the piece is polished correctly the missing metal should not be detectable. Look at it this way. Jewelry is made to be worn--there is no other reason for us to have it. If a piece of jewelry is tarnished/dirty and is scratched and no longer polished and shiny, you won't want to wear the piece. You don't wear it, you won't get any joy out of it. Clean it, have it polished professionally, and enjoy wearing the piece. Good luck.

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