Liver of Sulfur: Darkening Stamped Jewelry Without Markers and Paint

I bought a set of metal stamps on Amazon by ImpressArt because I had an idea for a fun "loot" ring. I wanted to stamp, "In Lootius We Trust" on the ring and darken the letters. The instructions on the stamp themselves suggested that I could darken my newly stamped letters with permanent marker or paint. I have read this approach on many blog posts and forum threads. I was a little disappointed that this was the one and only method that the stamps mentioned for darkening stamped jewelry. It feels like a short cut and I prefer to do it properly. Typically, I would only consider a lesser quality alternative if there are high risks to a higher quality option. Thankfully, in this case, the risks are not very large. Just the smells. Phew!

I purchased a bottle of Extended Life Liver of Sulfur, again, from Amazon. The general consensus seems to be that the gel lasts a bit longer but I still only bought 2oz, since I do not know how much I will be using this in the upcoming few months.

I mixed half of what the instructions said, using 6oz of boiled water that I let cool until it was hotter than warm but cooler than hot. I know that doesn't make much sense, but essentially I boiled water and then let it cool so that I was comfortable with pouring it into a plastic cup. To that 6oz of water I mixed a half a teaspoon of liver of sulfur, also with a plastic spoon specific for this purpose. To my surprise, it didn't really smell much when I made the mixture. Boy, I was not prepared for what was to come.

Next, I mixed a few table spoons of baking soda to about a cup and a half of water. As you can tell, I wasn't very exact with the baking soda bath. I just wanted to make sure that I had a neutralizing bath. This will become a bit more important later on, this lack of exaction...

 I first dunked my test ring (the bottom ring in the picture at the top) into the plastic cup and began slowly stirring it around and around. This stuff works fast. I took it out after a few minutes and it had already gotten a pretty dark patina around the ring. I took this one out with my gloved hands and put it into my stop bath. I did mention I wore gloves and chemical goggles right? Absolutely wear protective gear. Chemical splash in your face is as easy as getting soapy water in your eye doing the dishes. Except it won't just sting a bit.

I placed the second ring in for probably twice the time, to try and get a bit of a darker patina. The two rings ended up looking like this:

Sterling silver rings after using liver of sulfur. Left ring ~ 2-3 minutes, right ring ~ 5 minutes.

As you can see, there was a noticeable difference between the times. What really blew my mind though was how different the liver of sulfur's effect was on the solder on these two rings. The first ring I made (the skinnier one) I had a bit of trouble getting my work temperature high enough to melt my solder. So I tried with medium solder instead. I took a short cut and reminded myself why I don't take short cuts:

Top ring uses hard solder. Bottom ring uses medium solder. Huge difference in patina effect.

In this image, you can visibly see the difference between the medium solder on the bottom ring and the hard solder on the top ring. For a moment lets also ignore that the solder join on the bottom ring was significantly messier than the top one. This is why I practice on my own rings first! But the difference is huge. You can really tell when medium solder is used vs hard solder. This was really all the reward I needed for going through the trouble of figuring out how to make the hard solder work with my microtorch (I fired the charcoal block up a bit first to get it nice and hot and then set the ring on the hot block and applied heat as usual).

So earlier I mentioned the non-exact way I went about the baking soda bath. Well, you see, once I took my oxidized rings out of their baking soda bath, I rinsed them off and set them aside. About ten minutes later I looked over and I knew that the liver of sulfur was still going. The ring was almost completely black! Honestly, it looked pretty amazing to me. But I created another baking soda bath, with much more baking soda and placed both rings back in for a while. But by the time all was said and done, my rings were pretty much completely black. The good thing was that this layer was easy to remove with sanding. The other good news was the black was actually really quite sexy looking. I really like the deep, bold black color. I had to sand them both down for use in my Etsy listing for this loot ring, but if I had a choice for what I would personally wear, I would have kept it at the dark black stage, made sure the oxidation had stopped and then sealed it in.

So now I had two sexy black rings and a cup of liver of sulfur outside. To neutralize the liver of sulfur, I decided to pour my baking soda baths into the liver of sulfur.

I was unprepared for the stench war that ensued.

You see, the liver of sulfur smell when it was working on my silver rings was nothing. When I started throwing baking soda at it, the smells were relentless. To make matters worse, the air quality that day was pretty poor; high humidity, high temperatures. The smells floated into the air and just sat there. I hid indoors while we looked up how to deal with this monstrosity. I didn't want to pour it down the sink, seeing how persistent it was on my rings. Someone recommended kitty litter and so we had to acquire some (I don't have a kitty :( ). To the lovely smelling kitty litter full of baking soda I poured this already angry mix of liver of sulfur and baking soda bath.The smells multiplied and I fled back inside.

Shortly after, I dared to poke my head out the door and was happy to discover that the kitty litter had worked like a champ and the smells had mostly gone. Now that bucket is sitting outside, slowly drying so that I can dispose of it afterwards.

So lessons learned:

1. Don't take shortcuts
2. Make sure the stop bath is actually strong enough or else-
3. - you end up with a really sexy dark black silver ring. As Bob Ross would say, we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents, amirite?
4. Liver of sulfur absolutely stinks. It really starts to stink when you throw baking soda at it. SO DO THIS OUTSIDE. OUTSIDE! OUTSIDE! Unless you want to live with rotten egg smells for forever. Your neighbors will hate you, I grantee it.
5. As a further addition to the previous lesson, avoid working with these kinds of fumy chemicals when the air quality is poor and humidity is high and air circulation is slow. It makes things much worse!