Bench note
Looking after silver at home
Tarnish is not damage and dips are not a shortcut. A cloth, a drawer and a bit of use will keep silver right for a lifetime.
Silver tarnishes because sulphur compounds in the air react with the surface and form silver sulphide, which is dark. That is the whole mechanism. It is a surface reaction, it is thin, and it does not eat into the metal. A tarnished spoon has not lost anything.
The cloth is enough, nearly always
An impregnated polishing cloth, the soft ones sold for the purpose, will lift ordinary tarnish in a minute. Work along the piece rather than in circles, and on a satin or planished surface follow the direction of the existing grain so you do not leave cross marks.
Do not use a cloth on an oxidised piece. The patina is a deliberate surface and the cloth will take it off. Wipe those with a dry duster only, and send them back to me when the dark has worn thin. I redo it for nothing.
Washing
Warm water, a little washing-up liquid, a soft brush for the inside of a bowl, then rinse and dry immediately with a soft towel. Water left standing on silver leaves marks, particularly hard water, and those marks are harder to shift than tarnish is.
Silver should not go in a dishwasher. The detergent is aggressive, the temperature is high, and if a piece touches stainless steel in a hot wet environment you can get a galvanic reaction that pits the silver permanently. This is the one instruction I would ask people to take seriously.
What attacks silver
Salt, egg, mustard, onion, rubber bands, wool, newspaper and a great many household cleaning products. Salt is the important one: the open salt should be emptied, washed and dried after use rather than left standing full, because salt held against silver will corrode it in a way that tarnish never does.
Rubber is the surprising one. A rubber band left round a bundle of teaspoons will leave black stripes across them that go deep enough to need repolishing.
Dips
Chemical dips work by dissolving the tarnish, which sounds ideal until you look at what else they take. They strip the intentional darkness out of any recessed detail, they leave a slightly dull, chalky surface, and repeated use removes a small amount of silver every time. On antique work they can flatten the character of a piece in one go.
I would not use one on anything I cared about. If a piece is beyond a cloth, it wants a proper repolish, which is a restoration job and costs less than most people expect.
Storage
Air and sulphur cause tarnish, so limit both. A tarnish-resistant cloth roll or bag is ideal. A drawer with a small piece of chalk in it is a decent, cheap alternative, because chalk absorbs moisture. Avoid sealed plastic bags with anything damp in them and avoid storing silver next to wool or newsprint.
The best advice is dull
Use it. Silver that gets handled and washed regularly develops an even, soft surface and barely tarnishes at all, because it never gets the chance to sit. The pieces that come back to me black are almost always the ones that were put away carefully in 1994 and never touched again.
A teaspoon used every morning will look better in ten years than one kept in a box, and it will have been worth owning in the meantime.
In sequence