# sterling in nitric question



## Shark (Nov 4, 2018)

A while back I ran some gold over silver material and used nitric acid to dissolve the silver from the gold. It has been sitting and some of it has evaporated down and it started to drop out some whitish/silver looking crystals. I would like to use the left over solution in a cell to break down some more sterling if possible and if not I still need to recover the silver. How would I redissolve the crystals to make it usable, or is it even necessary to put those crystals back in solution? The original solution was just over 4 oz of sterling in 850 ml of 68% ntiric and distilled water at a ratio of 1:1. It is now down to just over 500ml. 

Sorry, I am not very up on silver and need to start learning more about it.


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## Lino1406 (Nov 4, 2018)

Silver nitrate crystals. Add distilled water to redissolve


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## Shark (Nov 4, 2018)

Thank you Lino, I was hoping it would be something simple.


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## Shark (Nov 7, 2018)

Time to try something new.


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## nickvc (Nov 8, 2018)

Shark I’m guessing that is a stainless silver cell, if so yes it will work to break down sterling but remember that the amount of copper builds very rapidly as the sterling dissolves which will mean co deposition of copper unless you are careful, Palladium did some fine maths about how quickly that happens if I remember correctly,
You can run a lot of sterling through the cell but you need to keep dissolving some of the already plated fine silver back into the solution by additions of nitric, I ran over 100 kilos doing just that in a 20 litre cell, also do not forget to have a filter cloth or bag to catch any slimes from your scrap, I was running a lot of gold plated silver scrap.


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## Shark (Nov 8, 2018)

Thanks, Nick, yes I am running sterling and it is a very small cell at 1 liter. Redissolving some of the silver has not been a problem, :lol: All of it that I have ran so far, roughly 3 ozt, had completely redissolved. I will now have to melt some of my silver cement stash to have something to work with until the weekend gets here. I had planned to buy some silver today, but the guy had a family emergency and couldn't make it. It is mainly setup so I can get a feel for running these style cells and to learn a bit more about silver.


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## Shark (Nov 22, 2018)

After multiply issues with the above attempt at a silver cell I watched Palladium's videos on the subject and may have found the father to several of my problems. (Thanks for the video links) While this is a small 1 liter cell, and I only had a small amount of silver to work with I gave it another shot anyway. All of this was done today besides the cementing of the silver to make the shot. 

While I have noted several mistakes than can be improved on next time I am happy so far, and will be looking for more silver to practice with.


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## Shark (Nov 23, 2018)

Maybe not as good as it should be, but a lot better than the first attempt. I have no idea what the black growth could be, and I did not even see it until I was ready to shut it down. It seems to be a late growth as the black looking spot dosen't go much past surface deep. Any ideas?


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## Palladium (Nov 23, 2018)

It's not black growth. It's from where you were poking around at the shot in the basket and the black powder from the basket passed through the filter cloth and dusted out on top of your crystals. Is you filter cloth material doubled or single layered?


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## Shark (Nov 23, 2018)

It's a single layer. I used a filter bag like kadriver used in his thread, made from a shop vac bag. I wil try to find some muslin cloth later today and see how that works unless you have something else that would do the job.


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## Shark (Nov 26, 2018)

I cleaned the silver from the second bowl and shoted it to run again. While it didn't look to bad it did have a dull grayish appearance. I just finished the second run using a double layer of muslin cloth. While it seemed to be larger pored than the vacuum bag it worked perfectly. I had no blackish powders this time. It seems the silver deposited denser than the previous times as well and with tight grains, Only one of the "bush's" from the "tree" growth fell loose while decanting the electrolyte as well. Here is a picture of it just after decanting it. It still doesn't look quite right but then I have very little to base that on as well. Any suggestions at this point would be welcomed.


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## FrugalRefiner (Nov 26, 2018)

There is a balancing act with anode bags. If the material is too light / weave is too loose / pores are too large, some of the slimes can make it through and contaminate your crystal. If it's too heavy / too tight / pores are too small, it inhibits the passage of silver ions from the anode to the cathode. That causes depletion of silver ions around the cathode, affecting the crystal growth.

Dave


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## Shark (Nov 27, 2018)

Thanks Dave. I am searching for more information on various filtering materials now as well. 


I had a chance to clean out my cell again and it looks pretty good after washing and drying it. I was looking for something to compare it with when I remembered I had a beautiful piece of silver crystals that kurtak gave my wife during his visit a while back. It is in the bag next to my dried silver for comparison. I am sure it isn't as pure as his, but it helps having a visual reference. Both have more sparkle than the picture shows.


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