That's a good question. When an average chip comes out after 1 minute and is still wet, it looks great! Totally clean and nice saturation. But then the water dries and you can see they've faded as well. The oil brings them right back and they stay looking really healthy. So, in this case, perhaps it does.
Do you have a before and after pic of the same chip?
This is comforting. Once inside they don't look as faded as they first did outside with my eye protection on. My main focus is not permanently damaging them, I love that green color.
You’re very welcome, of course.
These chips are now soaking in J&J gel, and look edible! 
Ski,You’re very welcome, of course.
Regarding the issue of color fading mentioned in several recent posts…
Many years after my original post, “Lundmark TSP” (or as I like to call it, “Lundmark Not Really TSP” - but hey, it works better than real TSP) remains my go-to for very effective and relatively low effort chip cleaning in an ultrasonic bath. I’ve cleaned somewhere around 100k chips, and that’s not an exaggeration.
That said, some degree of color fading occurs with ANY cleaning solution, and even in just plain hot water (search for some old replies in this thread regarding hot water pre-soaks)! Purple, red, and green seem to be more susceptible to fading than other colors.
Because of that, over the years, I’ve experimented with alternate cleaning agents and methods. Recently, I tried something different/new, and it had better results, although I used a manual process, and spent over 2 hours to clean just a single rack of chips. (Ouch.)
Take a look at the Paulson “Cherry” chips in photo below (the spots are Paulson “Peach” and “Metallic Gold”). These chips have *not* been oiled; they’ve only been cleaned:
View attachment 1324477
Manual labor aside, I was pretty happy with the results. While the chips don’t look “wet”, as chips do when they’ve been oiled, they don’t look dried out. I’d say they look “hydrated”.
Now… if I can manage to combine that with ultrasonic cleaning to add “fast and easy” to the effectiveness (is that a word?), I’ll take more photos and post details of the method.
I’m quite optimistic, or I wouldn’t have posted this, but nothing is guaranteed…
You might have missed the fact that I spent way over 2 hours on a single rack to achieve the results in my photo!
I’m hoping to figure out a way to do it *much* faster, and then I’ll share the details.
Nope! I read it just fine and I have more recently started to clean all of my chips by hand so I'm familiar with how much work it is to get done. I've found that cleaning by hand will clean the chips well but is also more gentle on the chips if you're careful. Don't soak too long, don't use too hot of water, don't use too much detergent. Red base chips tend to suffer the most from looking extremely parched after a run through the ultrasonic cleaner but still can look dry when being cleaned by hand so i was rather amazed that your already clean chips are still so vibrant.You might have missed the fact that I spent way over 2 hours on a single rack to achieve the results in my photo!
I’m unfamiliar with the manual “sonic scrubber” you mentioned.
In any case, you’d get the job done much better and faster if you used the Lundmark TSP (which isn’t really tri sodium phosphate; it’s sodium metasilicate) instead of any Oxi detergent. (That’s from personal experience.)
Aaabsolutely begging for hotstamps, my gosh. GLWS eventually.
Create an account or login to comment
You must be a member in order to leave a comment
Create account
Create an account and join our community. It's easy!
Log in
Already have an account? Log in here.
