Let me tell you a little story. While Jerry and I were designing the plates for our rimmed and speckled collection, we wanted our glaze to be so tough it would be scratch resistant. I told my brother-in-law Shawn that I wanted the hardest glaze that wouldn't scratch. He told me no problem.

After he finished mixing our glaze and testing a few of our products, he said that the glaze we are using can withstand up to 1000 grams of pressure before it would break down and scratch. "Perfect" I thought.

Once we started putting these bad boys on the market, we would occasionally get an email from someone saying that there were these black marks on their plates and would wonder why, since we label our products "scratch resistant".

I myself was wondering why these black marks were happening since they probably weren't using 1000 grams of pressure to cut their food.. or were they?

This resulted in Jerry and I doing many experiments with our own plates and silverware. We even filmed our tests which you can find below. We realized that our silverware would make black marks on our plates, but we could wipe the black marks right off with our finger. Since there was no real scratch left behind on our plates, we knew that it was just the residue from the metal of our silverware. 

Jerry then used his super strength to make a scratch as hard as he could on the plate. The result was a black mark that looked an awful lot like a big scratch. The funny thing is, those big scratches were actually able to wash off with a couple of our methods. 

Could it be that our ceramic glaze is tougher than the metal of our silverware? The answer is yes. When Jerry used his super strength to scratch the plate as hard as he could with a knife, he ended up bending the tip of the knife. 

So this means that since our metal utensils are softer than our crystalized glaze, when scraped against each other, the ceramic wins and the utensil looses, thus leaving a residue of metal on the plate. 

Now that we know how it happens, let's talk about how to get rid of the marks. Jerry and I did several tests, involving our fingers, a sponge, vinegar, toothpaste, salt, baking soda paste, and Bar Keepers Friend. 

Out of all the solutions, vinegar helped the least. It actually didn't help at all. Salt worked for those minor scratches that you can barely see. Toothpaste and a toothbrush was a no-go. Baking soda worked pretty well! But for the major black marks that Jerry pushed as hard as he could to make, the only thing that really worked amazingly well was Bar Keepers Friend.

Bar Keeper's Friend worked like a dream. All you have to do is sprinkle the powder on the plate, use a wet sponge and scrub with the scrubby side of the sponge for a minute or so until all the marks are gone. I like to think of Bar Keepers Friend as a wonderful exfoliant you use on your face. (No, I'm not saying you should use Bar Keepers Friend on your face! That would be a very bad idea!) It gets rid of any marks that could have been made from extreme knife scraping.

Now I'm not telling you to go and scratch your Mora plates as hard as you can with your butcher knife like Jerry. These plates are still dinner plates and should be used like dinner plates. But if you just happen to have silverware that leave marks on your plate, have no fear, Bar Keepers Friend will save you.

If you don't have Bar Keepers Friend and don't intend to buy any, go ahead and try the same method with baking soda. It also acts as an abrasive to get any marks off. It's just not as powerful as Bar Keepers Friend, so you might have to put a little more elbow grease into the cleaning process.

I'd also like to remind you that most of the minor marks I was able to wipe off simply with my finger. So these marks are really not a big deal. Please don't go and email our poor customer service team saying you have big black scratches on your plates. They're not scratches. They will wipe off. ❤️

I hope you learned a little something from this article and I hope it helps you be more at ease with your Mora Products. We only want to give you the best quality we can afford to make. You mean the world to us! Don't forget to hit pause, and have a wonderful day!

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Written by Alix Tieben