# recovering silver from Silver plated wire



## azgard (Apr 13, 2011)

i got a bunch of silver plated wire. i got a pile of communications cable from a 1950s navy ship. i stripped it down and found the wire and shielding is silver coated on what looks to be copper but its very fine. i was wondering can i use the HCL-peroxide method on this to disolve the copper and leave the silver behind. what im wondering will this work or will it disolve the silver too.


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## rusty (Apr 13, 2011)

You sure its silver and not tin plated wire. Drop a small bundle of wire into HCL and see what happens, if the coating disappears it's tin.


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## azgard (Apr 13, 2011)

i dropped in a few inches of each piece one of the mesh sheilding and a pice of the wire which is stranded 16 guage i think. so far after about 20 mins the HCL peroxide has turned very dark green and the wire is still coated silvery the mesh shielding has kinda turned to a mush and when i picked it up it like driped back in. so i beleve the 16 guage stranded is silver coated. will the HCL peroxide disolve the copper core leaving the silver behind.


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## azgard (Apr 13, 2011)

i just checked the pieces i put in the acid peroxide mix. i mixed it as i would for doing gold fingers i did about 2-1 hcl peroxide. what i pulled out was a cluster of brittle white wire. it broke all up in piece when i took it out and poked it. so it defenly looks like its eating away the copper. 
What im wondering is will the hcl-peroxide mixture disolve any of the silver or just the copper. 

and is this a good way of doing say 10lbs of wire.


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## Oz (Apr 14, 2011)

That is an interesting approach to silver plated copper wire. It may not be cost effective, but it will work. You may find that your residues of silver may have some silver chloride though.


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## azgard (Apr 14, 2011)

I also got some thick silver plate on brass strips pulled from some electrical things. Any easy way to get silver off of brass.


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## goldsilverpro (Apr 14, 2011)

azgard said:


> I also got some thick silver plate on brass strips pulled from some electrical things. Any easy way to get silver off of brass.



No.


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