Clay Vs Ceramic Cleaning (1 Viewer)

[TheBluffWhisperer]

Hello everyone!

For context, I am new to the forum.

I have recently purchased EPT replicas (ceramic) & they turned out great!

However, I had a spare set of Milano's that I'd like to gift to a friend. They are approximately 5-6 years old & I have never cleaned them.

I tried dawn soap and water on a few and noticed they took a bit of the colour and formed a mildew substance on the chips.

Does anyone have advice for the Milano's (ordered from Apache) and perhaps the ceramics (ordered off Alibaba- will attach photo) - in the future?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[LeLe]

Milano are not really Clay like Paulson or CPC who will benefit from oiling despite being called “China Clay”

They are closer to plastic composite instead, u can just wash them (both the Milano and ceramic EPT) in warm water to clean and remove the dirt/gunk

 

[OKYJJ]

Hello everyone!

For context, I am new to the forum.

I have recently purchased EPT replicas (ceramic) & they turned out great!

However, I had a spare set of Milano's that I'd like to gift to a friend. They are approximately 5-6 years old & I have never cleaned them.

I tried dawn soap and water on a few and noticed they took a bit of the colour and formed a mildew substance on the chips.

Does anyone have advice for the Milano's (ordered from Apache) and perhaps the ceramics (ordered off Alibaba- will attach photo) - in the future?

Any advice would be appreciated.

My Milanos and other China clays have always reacted well to the “oil and water” treatment. I’ve never used Dawn on them. The purpose of oiling has always been to brighten the colors and remove factory dust at the same time. It works well according to the directions Apache gives on their website where they use the red Pharaohs as an example.

I don’t know what the “moldy substance” could have been, but I haven’t seen anything like that.

What I have seen with Milanos more than any other chip is endless variations between different batches which must come from different factories. That is really the downfall of these chips. But I still like them. The 1,000 denomination is the worst with variations making chips not really look good together. Also, the orange 10K chips (which I relabel as 20k) can sometimes lose their color over time. It happened to the first 25 pack of them I bought, but fortunately all the ones I bought later are still nice and bright. The other annoying thing is the pink edge spots on the green 25s often lose their color in a similar way.

All that is to say, I would guess any issues you have with Milanos come from factory defects, rather than anything you’re doing to them.

A plastic tub / pan full of water with a few tablespoons of water mixed in works wonders. It takes patience, elbow grease, changing it all out when it gets dirty, ruining a few tea towels in the process (they get saturated with oil and grime); but it makes al your China clay chips look a lot better.