# YEP Tap water sucks



## Absolutsecurity (Jan 18, 2008)

I knew I shouldnt do it! LOL!!!!!!  

Ran out of distilled so I went ahead and added tap water and ended up with silver chloride in my nitric/silver ball deal - good thing it was only the final reaction - got 2+ pounds of silver off them already and was going thru the last gold layer - so I have the silver chloride in my filter so I will get to do the silver chloride way after all! LOL!

From now on I swear I am only going to use tap water to rinse!

From now on I swear I am only going to use tap water to rinse!

From now on I swear I am only going to use tap water to rinse!

From now on I swear I am only going to use tap water to rinse!


G


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## Harold_V (Jan 18, 2008)

While it may annoy the hell out of you, unless your water is VERY heavily chlorinated, it's not nearly as bad as it looks. I used tap water routinely when I processed silver with nitric. The only time I used distilled was when running my silver parting cell. 

I lived with the tiny amount of chloride, even when I recovered the silver on copper. Nothing, in the end, is lost, for everything gets recycled, and the chloride does nothing to harm the recovered silver. 

Not to change your mind-------just to let you know that it's not fatal!  

Harold


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 18, 2008)

Thanks Harold!

I listen to everything you tell me!

I know its not the end of the world but it makes stuff hard to filter and wastes my time! LOL!

G


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## Harold_V (Jan 18, 2008)

I never filtered my silver nitrate solutions when I was recovering silver, even if I had traces of silver chloride (which I routinely had). I never processed silver for the purpose of refining it-----it was used for inquartation. Only when it was used in that fashion and recovered with copper did it get a final refining. Totally irrelevant in the scheme of things, but there was method to my madness. 

I found that even if I missed my inquartation and the gold broke up in fine powder, all it took was a few hours of settling, far less time than filtering. I also didn't filter when I washed the collected cement silver. Only when I was ready to dry it did it see a filter. I'd simply wash it with tap water, allow it to settle, then decant. I'd do this until the wash water was clear (usually only three times or so). It took almost none of my time aside from siphoning the solution. 

When the wash was clear, I'd siphon off the last wash, then get the entire lot of silver in a large buchner. At this point, it filters very well, so it takes no time to pull the remaining water out. At that point it would have shrunk considerably, and pulled cracks in the silver. I'd compress the entire lot with the butt end of a pestle, then wash down the funnel well to insure all the silver was collected. 

This process shrinks the volume of the silver tremendously, making it much easier to handle. When the water was extracted to my satisfaction, I'd them dump the silver in a large evaporating dish, where it was force dried on a hot plate. The silver was then ready to be melted with flux (borax only-----no soda ash). The silver, once molten, was poured into a large cone mold, so the flux could be separated. 

When cooled, the buttons were chipped free of flux, then re-melted and cast as anodes, ready for the parting cell. The fluxing operation removed anything that was unwanted aside from traces of copper, so if you have a trace of silver chloride, it is removed in that phase of the operation. No big deal, really. 

I reprocessed all my flux, including it with low grade wastes when processing residues in my large furnace. The flux reduced any chloride present, with the resulting silver acting as a collector for higher values. In a sense, the process I developed worked to my advantage, because I needed a collector anyway. 

You might keep this in mind if you see more refining in your future. The benefit is you don't waste valuable time screwing around with a few cents worth of silver chloride, and it pays huge dividends when you recover it by collecting traces of values from low grade waste materials that might, otherwise, be lost. 

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!  

Harold


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## Anonymous (Jan 18, 2008)

to make nearly, or quite possibly chlorine free water, just boil it first.
very little cost. Do a stock pot make a few gallons at a time. 

Jim


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 18, 2008)

I will take my time Haroled and WAIT for stuff to settle - maybe my wife will see more of me then and this refining deal wont get a bad rap! Thanks Harold!!!

I will alos boil water to free the chlorine - I thought of that myself and Now that James's post says the same I am reassured!

G


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## Anonymous (Jan 18, 2008)

Thanks, but please, do not take my word for much as I am very new to 
this. I just figured from what I read on here and my few years of high school chemistry ( and life time of reading) that if you boil the chlorine will evaporate as it is not very soluble to begin with.

I also remember it working for my friends fish tank.

Jim


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 19, 2008)

Yeah I remember that if you let water sit open un covered over night or for 24 hours its chlorine free and you can put it in your fish tank with out the fish turning white!

G


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## peter i (Jan 28, 2008)

You are talking about two different forms of the element chlorine:

If you happen to live in a part of the world where you drink surface or otherwise contaminated water, it may be disinfected by adding chlor*ine* (Cl2, a green and toxic gas)
This will kill most micro organisms and make the water taste like cat's p... (At least when you are not used to it :wink: )
It will evaporate from the water to some degree on standing, as described for the fish tank.

But water may also contain chlor*ide* ions (Cl-), as in sodium chloride (rock salt), and no amount of airing will remove those.

A distillation on the other hand removes the water from the chloride ions, and yields chloride free water.


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## Irons (Jan 28, 2008)

but, then, you can always add a small amount of Silver Nitrate to your water, then let it settle overnight before you use it.

:twisted:


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