How To Clean Iron Pyrite

The name pyrite comes from the greek work puritēs which means of fire this is because before there were metals such as steel pyrite in its natural state was used to strike against each other to produce sparks that would start a fire.

How to clean iron pyrite. Click to see full answer. Let the pyrites stand in this solution until they have reached the brightness you wish. If you are wearing pyrite beads on a string and they are rubbing together and constantly producing the dust you can try cleaning and then restringing them to prevent the problem. It uses gypsum as its cleaning abrasive so it should polish without surface damage. Soak the specimen for 3 7 days totally submerged in the liquid then scrub the specimen with a hard tootbrush before washing citrus extract off.

In just about a minute your color will come back it doesn t take much to remove the oxide surface. This can take from 30 minutes to several hours. After a good scrub rinse throughly in water and look at the shine on your specimen. Remove the pyrites again using rubber gloves and rinse them in running water. Once there is significant surface damage from acid the luster cannot be restored.

You might try softscrub on a soft toothbrush. Little knots between the beads to act as spacers may help like you will often see with pearls. If you want to polish the finished not rough crystals you need to get some wet or dry sand paper start with 1200 grit use wet and if you can find any finner wet or dry paper finish with that. If you don t want to bury your pyrite in salt because you don t want it to get dirty you can place salt in a bag and set over your crystal for a few hours or overnight. The best way to use salt to cleanse pyrite is to bury it in a bowl of sea salt for 4 hours 8 hours or overnight.

Cleansing pyrite with smoke such as smudging is probably the most effective way to cleanse pyrite. Ive been using it for months with fantastic results. Discard the salt after you do this. Once the piece dries thoroughly you can soak it in high strength isopropyl alcohol to kill any bacteria then let that dry thoroughly.