Ron Cemer's Blog | Making the world a better place, one fish at a time.

Have you ever noticed how dishes, especially fine china, tend to accumulate rust stains, water stains or food stains? If they're left in the sink for a while, or washed in a dishwasher, this can happen fairly often.

Well, there is a way to get rid of most of these stains. In fact, there are two ways. I'll discuss both of them.

Usually the stains tend to accumulate on the bottom surfaces of the dishes, but can actually occur anywhere.

By Hand

The first way requires some elbow grease (also known as hard work). You'll need a box of baking soda and some paper towels.

1) Place a paper towel on a flat surface, and put the put the dish on top of the paper towel with the stained surface facing up.

2) Take another paper towel and bunch part of it up into a thumb-sized bunch. Wet the tip and dip it in some baking soda (just a tiny bit will do).

3) Gently scrub the stained area with the baking soda-coated portion of the paper towel, being careful not to scratch it (baking soda is abrasive!) You should see the stain disappear as you scrub. If needed, add some more baking soda by bunching up, wetting and dipping another part of the paper towel in baking soda. If you use up the entire paper towel, toss it and return to step 2 with a new paper towel.

4) After each dish is done, rinse it with water and dry it. You can then wash the dish as you normally would (hand-wash or dishwasher).

5) Repeat for each stained dish.

For stubborn stains, you can try using hydrogen peroxide instead of baking soda, but in either case, be careful -- baking soda and hydrogen peroxide can each damage the finish on fine china. In my personal experience, hydrogen peroxide had basically no effect on rust stains, so your mileage may vary.

Using a Power Tool

If you have a Dremel or other rotary tool, you can use it to get rid of the stains really quickly. I've tried this, and it gets the job done much more quickly and more effectively than the baking soda technique.

You'll need a rotary tool, a cloth polishing wheel, and some fine rubbing compound.

Wet the polishing wheel, then smear a little of the rubbing compound on the polishing wheel. Fire up the Dremel to medium speed, and use the spinning polishing wheel to polish out the stains. This also works fairly well for light scratches.

Be sure to test this process on a part of the china which is not very visible first, to be sure it doesn't damage the finish.

When you're done, wash the rubbing compound off completely with soap and water. Be sure to wash the dishes thoroughly before using them. I'm not sure what chemicals are in rubbing compound, but I'd think you probably wouldn't want to end up eating any of it, or its residue.