Having gone through several routines of soaking in DW then using
dental pick to remove dirt, I found there to be another layer, I'll call it the wax layer, which was persistently attached to the coin to matter what I tried. At first I thought it was the
patina, but I found that I could scrap it, but it seemed to
still stick to the surface and ended up just moving around. Fast forward to reading about using a
brass brush and picking one up from the hardware store - apparently the brush is used by electricians and was in the welding department. But when I used the brush on my previously cleaned coins, the troublesome final dirt layer came right off and my coins
had so much more depth to them. In fact, the brush revealed details of the coin that
had still been hidden. But there was a cost, as some of the high parts of the coin became irrecoverably golden. Since then I've found it so hard to go back to the DW+
dental pick method since the brush is so much quicker AND since I
still don't know how to remove the final waxy layer without the brush.
Does anyone know what this wax layer I mention could be? Here's a
still from a video I made while cleaning a join that shows how it behaves like wax and sticks to the coin.
