Caring for your Gemstone Globes

By Trey Thomas

High quality gemstone globes don’t come cheap, and if you want to get your money’s worth and make your investment last, you’ve got to know how to take care of your world globe. To keep your gemstone globe looking beautiful, you’ll have to make sure that you some periodic maintenance on the orb.

Fortunately, such a task isn’t as hard as it sounds. Yes, gemstone globes are delicate works of art that require careful cleaning—doing otherwise could very well damage your gemstone globe’s finish. But you can avoid that if you know what to use to when cleaning the globe, as well as the right method in cleaning it.

What You Will Need for the Job:

• Clean dust cloths (preferably cotton)
• Q-tips
• Water
• Few drops of mild dish soap

Step 1

Start with your clean dust cloth. If your gemstone globe only has a thin layer of dirt covering its surface, simply dust it with the soft cloth. You don’t need to have a fancy microfiber cloth or anything—a simple cloth diaper works just fine. Gently wipe the entire surface of the gemstone globe until its shine returns.

Step 2

Get your Q-tips and use them to clean the gemstone globe’s seems. Use the buds to clean the latitude and longitude lines, as well as the boundaries between countries and states. Despite how tight these seams are, dust can still penetrate the tiny gaps between the gems where regular cloth can’t reach into.

Step 3

If after all that, your gemstone globe still looks dull, proceed to take another clean cotton cloth and dampen with a little water, using it to wipe the globe once more. Whatever you do, don’t using anything abrasive, like rubbing alcohol. Water will do just fine, and anything stronger can potentially damage the your gemstone globe’s finish.

After cleaning your globe with the damp cloth, wipe it dry with yet another dry cloth. For a gemstone globe that’s really dirty, for example one that you found in a flea market, drop one to two drops of mild dish soap into a basin of water and use the solution to dampen your cloth. Follow this up with a cloth dampened with nothing but water to remove the soap residue. Don’t forget to wipe dry with a clean cloth.

With proper maintenance, your gemstone globe should continue looking beautiful for decades to come. And as the years go by, along with the continual changes in country boundaries, your globe could well become a collector’s item in the future.