Cleaning stained pot lids

[warith]

I've a few lightly stained pot lids, it's been recommended that I could use household bleach to clean them up. My question is: is bleach a good idea? If so what concentration?

I gather the best way to neutralise it after bleach is to place it in your cistern.


regrds
Warith
members.optusnet.com.au/warith0/newtown.html

 

[Gidday]

Hi warith, cleaning of lids is a very specialized field. Depending only the metal content of your local water supply, using a cisten is convenient but may not always be the best solution. Cleaning gets down to working out what has stained the lid in the first place then finding the correct agent to remove. This is seldom easy unless you are an industrial chemist. Things like smoke and heat are impossible. Bleach can sometimes make a lids condition worse. Bleach like so may other cleaning agents (navel gel, hydrogen peroxide etc) is easy to apply but very tough to get back out. Failing to do this can damage / destroy the lid over time. Several stories out there from collectors who went back to find examples cleans now a pile of white dust! What ever you try ensure you apply in mild doses and always soak and get the lid back to a ph level of around 6 (that of water). Heating a lid breifly can also help along some stains. Knew of a guy that used to microwave some his lids on low in soapy water....

 

[warith]

I've heard the microwave idea previously too; however I've some pot lids & bases that are very rare (3 known and 1 known in two cases) so I'm kinda loathe to do something that sounds so severe. Problem is that I can see the lids getting worse on my shelf anyhow, so it's now an isuse of danmed if I do and damned if I don't.

I'm from Sydney, the water here isn't particularily hard, so I think the cistern will neutralise bleach eventually. The staining is almost certainly iron oxide, I'm thinking bleach will do wonders to get rid of that! I also have one that's smoked, but I don't expect anything can help it!

 

[IRISH]

I very strongly recommend NOT using Chlorine based bleaches on ANY stoneware, Iron Oxide stains will often turn pink as will burn stains after bleach treatment and you will never get that pink out. I have done a bit of experimenting with various Chlorine compounds for removing stains and have to agree with a friend who is an industrial chemist who says never to get the stuff near anything you want to keep.
You are best to try Phosphoric Acid based stuff on it (navel gell is one) and soak it in clean water for months after, even then you take a risk with some colour transfers.

PS one of the plain rubbishy stone bottles I used in my experiments had all the glaze fall off after a while [] , that was after soaking. A few turned yellow or pink too.

 

[Gidday]

Irish, not sure how avaliable naval gel is down under however it is not withour its issues either. It is particually good with respect to cleaning rust however one small exposure will drop the PH to about 2 and takes months of soaking to get back to where it should be. Lids not cleaned properly after a dose of this stuff have a chalky feel and can emitt a white powder substance for years. Sometimes breaking down completely! If I had a rare lid with few examples know, the only thing I would be soaking it in is water.

 

[warith]

I've tried water; left one of the (more common) bases in a cistern for two months. It made no difference. On top of that a few of the bases are already emitting the "chalky" feel and will probably fall appart completely within the next few years if I don't do anything. it's making me very worried.

 

[Gidday]

Soaking in water is to remove impurities, not to clean a stain. The ones emitting power I would bath immediately. (I DO EVERY NEW LID PURCHASED) It may take several months or more to neutralize. Keep testing the water PH level with litmus paper or similar until it returns to neutral then sleep easyier. Interesting topic this one. The dreaded chemical legacy[]. These days more likely to happen to finds above the ground than below.

 

[Gidday]

I've some pot lids & bases that are very rare (3 known and 1 known in two cases)

Warith, out of interest what are these?

 

[warith]

I'll get some pictures for this forum real soon; I know one base was one of three (I found all three!) and another seems to be the only example known. I haven't yet found a complete Australian pot lid (couple of UK ones, but they don't count! . What I've found that's probably quite interesting is a few different Aussie pot bases.

The bases & lids I'm trying to repair are one stained pot lid (a very old cold cream one) a baby feeder ceramic thing and most of the bases. They all either are or were hevily stained from rusty tips and (perhaps mistakely) I gave some a strong acid bath. The bath left them all looking terrific but they then turned yellow []. Of course all the plain-skin ones I used for testing remain immaculate!