[mikeeastman]

I have some silver speaker wires that bare wire ends and want to add connecters but the ends are oxidized, what should I use to remove the oxidation.

[SteveFord]

I would try soaking it in ammonia, 1 cup water to half cup ammonia and then rinse and dry.

[Mallard1]

There is a product called De-Oxit  i use it most all the time with switches pots etc.

[richidoo]

There are dips and wipes for cleaning silver, using various chemicals.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0063KBKZU/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008RH68CC/
Weiman wipes doesn't claim to leave a residue to prevent/slow future tarnishing, which may be an advantage in your application.

When I had a silver trumpet I polished it with special rag embedded with a silver cleaning chemical. It worked very well.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002NLUGUS/

Stabilant22 or a silver-impregnated conductive grease can be used on the connection itself if you don't want to clean often.

[ketchup]

I recently tried to remove oxidation with DeoxIT from my silver KLEI hot RCA pins, and it did not work at all.  I ended up using Mothers mag and aluminum polish which worked beautifully.  I followed up with acetone to remove anything left by the polish.  This may not be the easiest method for stranded wire, but it will definitely work.

https://mothers.com/collections/tire-wheel/products/mag-and-aluminum-polish-05100

[mikeeastman]

Thank you all for the replies. The problem with polishes is that the wire is very fine stranded and would be pita. I was hoping for some kind of liquid or spray.

[ketchup]

Thank you all for the replies. The problem with polishes is that the wire is very fine stranded and would be pita. I was hoping for some kind of liquid or spray.

I've done it a few times and it's really not that bad.  All you need to do is fan out the strands, rub each side gently with a trace amount of polish on a rag, then clean it off with acetone.  Done.

[FullRangeMan]

If they have no connectors yet I would cut the ends and use fresh wire tô connectors. IMO

[Tyson]

Just clip them off and strip the wire jacket a bit.

[NoahH]

I agree with snipping the oxidized ends. If you don't want to lose an inch to that, flux in solder is also meant to remove the oxidation on metals during soldering. Soldering the ends into a solid slug with some silver solder and flux could work well too. I find those easier to work with, but avoid it when you need a metal transition in it as you do with copper, but with silver you can do it without the transition.

But if you can afford to lose an inch, snipping is the easiest by far.

[mikeeastman]

 Thanks for all the replies.The only problem with striping in not the lose of an inch, but I would have to strip over 200 individual 26 gauge wires. would be a real PITA. So if I can avoid that it would make life easier.

[FullRangeMan]

Wow, what cable is that?

[mikeeastman]

I’m redoing my system and going full active and there are over 20 cable ends and each cable is 10 strands of wire and 8 of those are stranded wire.

[NoahH]

Knowing you need to do this at scale, you might do the electrolytic method for deoxidizing. There is an ok summary of it at https://www.instructables.com/Polishing-Silver-Two-Fast-Effortless-Methods/ that is even easier when the item being deoxidized is actually a wire itself

[mikeeastman]

Thanks Noah that's what I was looking for, I can easily do that.

[DaveC113]

QD electronics cleaner is pretty powerful stuff, soaking for a bit may work well. Caig deoxit leaves a residue that gets all over the place, and it's not as strong as QD.

I use Furutech Nano-Fluid to protect exposed wire from corrosion.

IDK about using a chemical treatment, might end up leaving behind some impurities. I've never tried it though.