How to pickle soldered wire with a gemstone attached

[CindyS]

If I solder a piece of wire that I have a gemstone bead strung on (wire through the drill holes) how do you clean it in pickle without the stone being pickled.  I hope this makes sense...  Can you put stones in pickle?  Thank you! 

[Metalman]

You can put stones in the pickle but you will want to testy first. Soft stones may react with the pickle causing the surface to lose its polish or become pitted or . Pickle is an active chemical - that's how it cleans the flux off your metal - this can then react with gemstones. On way to approach this is by hardness - the Mohs scale of mineral hardnesses. In general, I would expect that anything softer than a 7 Mohs might react with your pickle. Glass is generally 6 so anything softer than glass you will want to pickle a test piece before you use your good stuff this way.
Hope this helps

[Luann Udell]

What about those self-pickling fluxes?

[Metalman]

My sense is that the self pickling fluxes still need some pickle cleaning for the whole of the piece once you are done soldering