What do you think of them? Can you use them to clean porous stones and freshwater pearls? I am thinking of getting one, but not sure whether to make the investment.
Anne, I have one of these machines, it was about £45 and honestly I haven’t found a great deal of use for it. There are so many things you can’t put through it, definitely no pearls or any type of soft gemstone, not even my aquamarine ring.
It does a wonderful job of cleaning spectacles however!
As Julie said , definitely not for soft or porous stones, they are brilliant for cleaning up rings and earrings that have got clogged with soap and perfume behind the stones.
I use mine quite a bit when repairing and restoring worn pieces - I don’t use on new work - it doesn’t remove oxides/ tarnishing from metal.
Thank you Deborah, thank you Julie - really helpful.
I have an ultrasonic bath and the list of things I can’t put in it is long - not only porous gems but anything with a laminar structure or highly flawed isn’t suitable. But as Deborah said it is brilliant (in conjunction with a soft tooth brush) at getting gunk out from behind old claw settings. If you do get one be careful with the commercial ultrasonic cleaning solutions some of them contain chemicals that can bleach gems (but give metal a nice gleam).
Thank you Sasha! This is all really helpful - I’ve decided not to buy one, so thank you all so much for your input.
I work as a theatre nurse and we used ultrasonic cleaning machines for years to clean some intruments before sterilising them. First thing in the morning we all used to put our jewellery in it and it came up lovely. One day the head of infection control paid us a random visit, looked in the ultrasonic, and found that one of the technicians had left his medallion and soverign rings in there!!
We don’t have the machine now…
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