I Won Something! An Ultrasonic Cleaner.

Back in May this year the jewellery supply website Cooksongold ran a month long "lucky dip" competition where they had a prize draw for each day of the month. I entered quite a few of them as there were some lovely prizes on offer. 

I had bookmarked the competition results page so I could check if I'd won anything when they listed the winners on June 16 but completely forgot about it until the beginning of July. So I checked and was thrilled to see I'd won an Ultrasonic cleaner! Then I noticed I'd missed the claim date by two days and read that if prizes weren't claimed they would do a re-draw and send it to someone else. Oh noooo! I emailed Cooksongold anyway and they said it wasn't too late and that they'd get it in the post in the next few day. Yay!

So it arrived and I unpacked it...

The contents of the box can be seen on the side of the box in the top photo - the cleaner, two plastic trays, a plastic stand for two CDs plus a polishing cloth and the instruction booklet.

 This photo shows my cat Eddie in the box - if it's there he'll sit in it........

I was aware of ultrasonic cleaners but didn't really know how they worked, just that people used them to clean jewellery. I thought they were a bit of super high tech equipment and sounded very complicated but the cleaner I won costs about £48 and is a basic model. There are much more expensive, larger versions available too.

They work with water using tiny bubbles produced by high frequency sound waves that agitate the water and dislodge any dirt on a wide variety of objects - metal, plastic, glass, rubber and ceramics. Basically anything that can be safely put in water for a few minutes can be cleaned. There is a special cleaner you can use with it too for more grubby items which you would need to buy separately but normal washing up liquid is fine for most items.

I had a go with a pair of glasses and sunglasses...

I didn't need to use the plastic basket that comes with it so I just filled up the stainless steel tank with tap water to the max level mark, added a drop of washing up liquid, put the glasses in and switched it on.

I took this photo with the lid up to show the vibration in the water.

It's very simple to use - On, Off and Set. There are three settings - I used the middle one which is 3 minutes to clean my glasses. The digital display screen counts down the time as it's working. The glasses and sunglasses came out super clean and those bits of dirt that get trapped between the frame and the lenses came off too. You can use it to clean CDs and DVDs {that surprised me} and if you have a metal watch strap you can clean that too using the special plastic stand which keeps the watch out of the water.

When you've finished with it you just tip the water down the sink and dry the inside.

You do get a polishing cloth with the ultrasonic cleaner and it does recommend using it on tarnished jewellery before putting it in the cleaner as the cleaning process will remove dirt but it doesn't polish so your tarnished silver jewellery is not going to come out super shiny unless it was like that when it went in! 

That's useful to know if I ever want to clean a piece of jewellery I've oxidized with LOS - it shouldn't have any effect on the oxidized finish.

I'm not sure I'll use it much on jewellery but it is nice to have for cleaning other items and it was lovely to win something for a change!

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