Detailed Cleaning tips?

[peterpil19]

Hi,

Anyone have tips on cleaning in the hard to reach places (lettering in particular)?

My toothpicks split very quickly and not fine enough to clean in between lettering...

That's the only roadblock I've hit so far since starting to clean some of my uncleaned coins.

If this has been covered elsewhere and I have not been able find it then please feel free to simply point me towards a prior post.

Peter

[areich]

Some people use needles (e.g. in a pin vise), heads of syringes, something like that.

[Joe Sermarini]

Some people use needles (e.g. in a pin vise), heads of syringes, something like that.

If you are going to use metal (needles or scalpel), it should be under magnification.

[Severusalex]

If you're going to be cleaning in those areas you should use a microscope with very good lighting or at the very least a magnifying lamp.

I use dental instruments to clean dirt from the faces of coins, you want to keep a very sharp edge, so I would recommend also using a whetstone to be constantly sharpening the tip on your tool.

Hope that helps!

[SC]

If the stuff you are cleaning out is soft, then bamboo skewers might work as they are a bit tougher than toothpicks.

For harder stuff, the advice from the rest of the guys (light, magnification and sharpened metal) is great.

Shawn