Use liver of sulfur to oxidize your jewelry at home!

Yes. Yes I have seen those videos showing how to oxidize silver with an egg, but considering how expensive eggs are at the moment (greetings from early 2023) and how I am generally opposed to wasting food, I’d like to recommend using a good professional tool for oxidizing your jewelry. The best part is that this method is my favorite for oxidizing jewelry that combines sterling silver and karat gold.

Introducing my favorite oxidizing substance - Liver of Sulfur

How does Liver of Sulfur smell?

Liver of Sulfur a) smells just as great as the name suggests* and b) is my favorite method for oxidizing jewelry in spite of the smell. It is also an older method for oxidizing and is cited in jewelry textbooks from almost 100 years ago.

One of the reasons that I love it so much is that it doesn’t really discolor gold**. I make a lot of mixed metal pieces for my collection - sterling silver mixed with 18 and 14 karat gold elements and I love the way that blackened silver looks. Getting that great contrast between the blackened silver and the gold really makes a design pop, but taking oxidation off of gold is a pain and adds an extra step to production time. Liver of sulfur is the best product that I have found to get your silver oxidized while barely touching the gold parts.

What tools do you need to oxidize jewelry?

Locking tweezers or anything you can use to grab your jewelry - preferably not your fingers as the water is really hot
A heat-proof container
Baking Soda to neutralize
Boiling water
Cooler water (running water from a tap works)
Liver of Sulfur gel
Something to ventilate - an open window; a fan set to reverse; or a fan facing out of a window; or a full ventilation system

FYI - The tumbler that I am running in the background is a magnetic tumbler/pin finisher and not a rotary tumbler. That's why it tumbles so quickly. I highly recommend it as a tool and it is especially great for creating that shiny black finish on oxidized silver jewelry.

Step-by-step guide

Remember to always ventilate

Safety first! Ventilation, use a respirator, oh and keep your liver of sulfur away from your pickle—I learned recently that pickle (the acid bath that many jewelers use to remove oxides from their work) and liver of sulfur can have a chemical reaction when they meet. Thankfully I read about this and didn’t have to experience it myself. My wish is the same for you.

Start with very hot water

I often keep an electric kettle going to keep water at a very hot temperature. Once liver of sulfur gets cold, it is less effective.

Use just a little

Liver of sulfur gel is highly potent and a little goes a long way. If you add too much to the water, you get an oxidized surface that doesn’t adhere to the silver very well and will flake off. A small dab in half a cup of water or a pea sized amount in a cup of water should be enough. You can always add more later, but it’s harder to thin out the solution.

Go slow and build it up

Each time you dip the metal, pause and either dip in or run under cold water to stop the oxidation process. Then either use a brass brush or another burnisher to remove a bit of the oxidation.

Repeat this step until you have achieved the finish you want. I also sometimes toss mine into my pin finisher to burnish it and then give it one more dip in the liver of sulfur.

Neutralize the process

I like to end the process by dipping in baking soda to neutralize any acid, but then I rinse off the baking soda right away.

To dispose of the used Liver of Sulfur, neutralize it with some baking soda. It will bubble up just a little. Keep pouring in baking soda little by little until it stops bubbling. Once neutralized, then it is safe to pour down the drain or take to a site that recycles chemicals.

What questions do you have? Pop them in the comments below!

*Farts. It smells like farts.

**Occasionally I have noticed that 14 karat gold can get a little oxidized by this and there are a lot of reasons for that: