# silver scrapping screw-up



## alex1402 (Mar 29, 2014)

Got a question for you all. In my early days of silver scrapping (about 9 months ago), I obtained several dishes and coffee pots with handles. Unfortunately, they were silver plated instead of 925. I found this out by trying to melt them. What I ended up doing was melting the silver plated handles (thinking they were sterling) and mixing the shots in my bucket of real sterling shots  . Now I have ended up with 9 pounds of shots all mixed together and I dont know how to get the bad stuff out without using thousands of dollars of nitric acid to refine the whole batch.

There must be an easy way of separating this mess without the massive cost. I'm sure I'm not the first over anxious new refiner to have made this mistake. Anyone have any idea's for me?


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## nickvc (Mar 29, 2014)

If its only a small percentage of the whole it's not going to break the bank as you are presumably going to dissolve the silver any way, it will take a little more nitric but not gallons.


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## Pantherlikher (Mar 29, 2014)

What was the purpose of melting in the first place? 
To learn, ya learned...

Are you running a cell? refinning with nitric?
Do as you were keeping in mind what you started with. It's dirty.

B.S.


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## Westerngs (Mar 29, 2014)

I will assume the intent is to keep the sterling shot and not to refine it.
If so, you might try dissolving the sterling shot in hydrochloric acid. The real sterling
will not dissolve, although it will likely form a light coat of silver chloride.
The plated shot will likely dissolve almost completely unless the base metal happened 
to be copper.

Try this, if it works, fine, if not, come back for further advice.
Another thought just popped into my head, can't you tell the difference just
by appearance? If all the shot is badly oxidized it may be necessary
to pickle it in dilute (5%) sulfuric acid.

Follow up with results for whatever you try.


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 29, 2014)

Of the 9 pounds, how much weight was sterling? 

What was the base metal of the silver plated material? Hopefully, it was copper based. However, some of the cheaper plated items I've seen of this type are low melting point pot metal, composed of such things as Zn, Pb, Sn, Cu, Mg, Al, Fe, or Cd. Some of these metals could cause dissolving problems

If it is copper based, it would take between about 1.5 to 4.5 gallons of nitric to dissolve everything, depending on the ratio of sterling to plated copper.

The silver plate would not be worth processing in nitric. I'm wondering if you could sort the shot visually. If it's oxidized and it all looks the same, you might be able to leach it in a weak 5-10% sulfuric or HCl to dissolve the oxidation on the surface. Then, rinse it well and try to dry it without it becoming re-oxidized. This might give enough color difference to sort it. Sorting would, of course, go faster if the shot were in large pieces.

In a large refinery environment, I would experiment with small quantities of it. If I couldn't quickly figure out a simple way to do it, I would add it to something else that was being processed, such as refiner's bars from incinerating and melting the metal from circuit boards.

In other words, off hand, I have no simple idea on how to do this.

I just saw Westerngs's post after I wrote this. Great minds think alike, I guess.


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## Ian_B (Mar 29, 2014)

Take all the metal to a refiner have them melt and assay. take the payout they give or take pure in return. Sure you would probably be eating a bit because of fee's and the % over spot you would get charged for the bullion but it would be done and over with and you would know for next time not to start melting everything without testing.


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## skippy (Mar 30, 2014)

The handles are going to be either lead based or pewter based. Both probably have a lot of tin in them.
I know nitric dissolving tin makes a bad situation. You get the a gel that messes up everything. I imagine it's a problem in a cell too.
As mentioned the most practical thing to do is to sell, but if you want to solve it yourself, I think you could cupel out the tin and lead.
Or perhaps melt with an oxidizing flux and stirring.


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## necromancer (Mar 31, 2014)

if you rub clean silver on white paper does it leave a trail.......

if you rub tin, lead or pewter on white paper does it leave a trail..........


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## alex1402 (Apr 2, 2014)

Wow, it looks like you all have great knowledge of the refining process. I do not know the percentage of Silver to non-silver. An educated guess would be about 50/50. I love all of the options you have given me here. I really appreciate it. Please remember that I am new at this and excuse my potential "stupid question" but... Since silver melts at one temp and lead/zink/pewter etc. melt at another, do you think it would be possible to melt a batch and try to cool it down slowly? This would potentially form a sort of rainbow Popsicle effect and give a somewhat messy separation allowing me to cut and discard the obvious waist and keep the silver. This would cut down on what it would cost to send it to a refiner. Your thoughts?


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## goldsilverpro (Apr 2, 2014)

You can't see any visual differences?

Good idea, Necromancer. Paper marking could very well work.

Melting won't work. You would get alloying of the silver and the other metals.


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## necromancer (Apr 2, 2014)

would handling it leave marks on the pure silver & not on the dirty melted silver ?

i have had silver plated escrap that had my finger prints on it after holding it with bare hands (in 30 seconds), just a thought

i love tests that are free.


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## rich_2137 (Apr 5, 2014)

Why is this post in the Gallery??!!!!


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