# 999 fine silver from my silver cell



## kadriver (Apr 2, 2011)

Here are some pictures of one of the silver bars I made to sell on Ebay.

Please let me know what you think, and share any insight about selling my silver bars.

I am getting at least spot price (never below spot) and i usually get a little extra all the way up to 15% over spot recently.

I am carefully controlling purity and quality as best I can to give a superior product. I even use distilled water for all the processing including washing before melting.

Stamped on each bar is the purity, the date of pouring, and the weight.

I sold 50 troy ounces of 999 fine silver in March on Ebay (10 - 5 troy ounce bars).

The bar pictured sold for $197.50 plus $4.95 shipping on 26 March 2011.

Thanks for looking - comments welcome.

kadriver


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## samuel-a (Apr 2, 2011)

Nice work kadriver 

your silver looks very good.

i would very much like to see your stamping tools as well.

Sam


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## stihl88 (Apr 2, 2011)

Nice work Kardriver, your posts are inspiring.

Ive nearly got about a kilo of Ag and think i might do something like you have.
Do you care to put some pictures up of the torch, mold and stamps etc?

Regards

Will


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## kadriver (Apr 2, 2011)

I will add pictures of the torch, mold, and dish set-up that I use


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## dcurzon (Apr 3, 2011)

your bars all come out looking great kadriver! love that swirl pattern you get. Are you doing anything after the pour to get the smooth shine?


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## metatp (Apr 3, 2011)

Kardriver,

Nice bar. Instead of using Ebay to sell, you might do well to sell on this forum. Don't know, but with Ebay, you pay about 11-12% in fees. If you are always getting 5-10% over spot, it may not matter. 

Regards,
Tom


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## adam_mizer (Apr 3, 2011)

HTPatch said:


> Kardriver,
> 
> Nice bar. Instead of using Ebay to sell, you might do well to sell on this forum. Don't know, but with Ebay, you pay about 11-12% in fees. If you are always getting 5-10% over spot, it may not matter.
> 
> ...



Real nice bars Kadriver, you do real good work.

HTPatch and when you add in Paypal fee's with ebay fee's your nearly at 15% in costs, ripps right into a persons pocket!


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## kadriver (Apr 4, 2011)

Hello; and thanks for your interest.

I am using two torches. One is MAP that I use to preheat the graphite mold.
While the mold is being heated, I use an oxy/acet cutting torch (Harbor Freight - $279 on sale) to melt the silver crystals from my silver cell.

I use a clean 4 inch melting dish. The dish will begin to get a little dirty after about 50 Troy ounces of silver has been through it - then I use it for silver anode bars and get a new clean dish for the fine silver work.

I melt the pure silver crystals with the oxy/acet torch. Then just before I pour I quickly switch to the MAP torch and use it to pour the metal into the mold.

I was getting oxygen absorbtion with the oxy/acet torch. This produced out gasing as the bar cooled in the mold and sometimes i would have to melt the same bar several times before I got a good looking bar. By switching to MAP just before pouring, the o2 absorbtion is gone, and the bar comes out with those nice swirl patterns.

I preheat the graphite mold but I remove the MAP torch just as the silver is ready to pour. This give the mold a little time to cool down just a bit. I have found that a very hot graphite mold seems to put bubble in the bottom of the bars. Allowing it to cool just a bit helps prevent this.

I have been very busy and I have not had a chance to put up some pictures. The stamps are 1/8 inch steel stamps I bought off ebay.

I an doing this full time now and it sure beats punching a time clock.

Thanks for reading - kadriver


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## stihl88 (Apr 5, 2011)

Thanks for the info, that's really helpful.

Do you have a link from where you purchased the Graphite mold from, ebay? Ive seen several but none that are quite specific for Silver as it is lighter than gold so a 5 T-oz will only take about 3.5 T-oz of Silver, Ive been thinking of making an adjustable cast iron mold but i don't quite have have Oxy within arms reach so that might be troublesome.

Lovely looking bars once again!


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## kadriver (Apr 5, 2011)

I purchased the mold off Ebay.

I got one block of graphite with four cavities:

1 troy oz 
2 troy oz
5 troy oz
10 troy oz

this mold is for fine gold. But I use it for silver also.

I think I paid $70 on Ebay. 

I will take my camera and get shots of all this stuff for the forum.

Hope this is helpful - kadriver


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## dcurzon (Apr 5, 2011)

what is your starting material?


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## element47 (Apr 5, 2011)

Your bars, both these silvers and the gold one you posted, look great! Works of art!


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## kadriver (Apr 5, 2011)

Starting material:

925 jewelry, Sterling jewelry, sterling flatware, sterling bowls, candle holders or dishes.

I find them at yard sales and resale shops. But it is my wife who is the real go-getter. She finds nearly all my silver & gold that I process.

With the silver I carefully sort and remove stones. Then I melt using an old melting dish. Once melted, I pour the molten silver into a tall container of water to form flakes and shot. The acid can really get at the silver when it is in this form.

I dissolve the silver in dilute nitric acid 50/50 acid to distilled H2O. I use a little less acid than is necessary so that it all gets used up and there is small bits of silver left in the bottom of the container.

I then cement out the silver and make anode bars for my silver cell.

Hope this is helpful - kadriver


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## kadriver (Apr 12, 2011)

Here is the stamping tools:

I just eye-ball them the best I can.

Also pictured is my torch station.

And a big jar of cemented silver.

I use only cemented silver for anode bars.

925 & sterling saturate the electrolytic cell too quickly.

I am trying to get the purity of the silver as high as I can

Thanks for looking - kadriver


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## stihl88 (Apr 17, 2011)

That's great Kadriver, thanks for sharing this here.

How do you think a hand held torch would go with 5 oz of Ag, instead of Oxy?

I cant remember if you posted details of your silver cell here or not, but this is my next step (A silver Cell) then on to melting some bars.

Have you got a link to your Silver Cell or are you yet to post it here?

Stihl88


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## kadriver (Apr 25, 2011)

stihl88:

Get one of Lazersteve's dvds "Silver A to Z". It explains how to set up your silver cell and is worth every penny. My silver cell is idential to the one demonstrated in the dvd. Except I use a glass rod to suspend the anode basket.

At first I used a copper wire like in the video, but the electrolyte dissolved some of the copper and it was getting into the pure silver crystals. There is no possibility of this with a glass rod for the anode basket.

Check youtube.com for instructions on how to set up an old computer power supply to use with your cell. I use the 3.3 volt rail of the computer power supply and get nice fat pure silver metal crystals.

I get about 15 troy ounces every three days.

I use only cemented silver as anode bars in my cell. using melted 925 silver bars fouled the cell very quickly, in my opinion.

I have put over 100 Troy ounce of 999 silver through my cell this time around and the electrolyte is clear and bright with a light green color that looks like lime coolaid.

I filter the electrolyte every time I harvest the pure silver crystals.

I am going for highly pure silver bars to sell on ebay. I may be making a mistake by not using less pure silver for anode bars. I am still new to refining.

Using a MAP gas torch to melt 5 troy ounces would work, but it would take a while.

kadriver


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## samuel-a (Apr 25, 2011)

kadriver 



kadriver said:


> I may be making a mistake by not using less pure silver for anode bars.



This is no mistake, high purity anodes (98-99.9%) are essential part for any successful electrowinning process. keep up the fine work that you are doing.


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## element47 (Apr 25, 2011)

Nice pictures, nice work, and nice results! I appreciate your comments on the purity of anodes. I have a ton of sterling flatware which I was considering using as anodes and you've (probably for my benefit) discouraged me to some extent. Thanks again!


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## stihl88 (Apr 26, 2011)

Thanks Kadriver, i will certainly buy Steve's Silver Cell video, i need some more melting dishes etc anyway.. .Thanks for the advise their.

Ive got a Power Supply and about 500g of refined silver powder to get things moving, Ive got some more Silver coming.
I'll get some molds in the mean time from Fee-Bay, some more NHNO3 and borrow my old mans Oxy setup.

Still love looking at your Bullion BTW...


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## metatp (May 9, 2011)

WOW! I just love refining silver! I never get bored of growing crystals. The crystal in my cell seem a little different each time. When I used a 2000ml beaker, everything else the same, I got very thick crystals one my first harvest, but not so thick one subsequent batches. It was easier for me to use the 1000ml beaker, so I went back to it and hoped to get the thick crystals again. I did somewhat, but not like before. The last batch was the very interesting. The crystal after a while started growing like flowers. Very pretty. Many were like fans. The best way I can describe it is like the flat purple coral fans you see in Florida when snorkeling. I have no picture, but has anyone seem these flat fans before? I did notice that the electrolyte was a little greener than previous batches.

Regards,
Tom


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## 4metals (May 10, 2011)




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## metatp (May 10, 2011)

That what the crystals remind me of. Has anyone seen silver crystals like that before?


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## stihl88 (Jul 17, 2011)

Ive been thinking about a design to operating the cell in a way that didn't involve melting the cemented Ag but instead just processing the cemented Ag directly in the cell.

The idea would be to top up the glass cylinder Ive added in the picture with cemented Ag powder as required, making sure the cathode rod doesn't get dissolved in the electrolyte solution.

I know there is likely to be problems with this design otherwise i figure that someone would have already tried this before.
One flaw i could see happening is the cemented powder drawing/sucking up the electrolyte solution and contacting and diminishing the Cathode rod.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this design, do you think it is worth trying?

_*EDITED:* I fixed the Cathode and Anode direction in the picture_


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## seawolf (Jul 17, 2011)

The one problem I see with the idea is that the filter may become stopped up when using only 1" of the area of the filter. Perhaps an acid resistant mesh small enough to hold the powder but allow any non-silver materials to drop through. It looks like an interesting idea.
Mark


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## samuel-a (Jul 17, 2011)

stihl88

There is a basic flaw with this design, metal powders do not conduct electricity very well and one will need to compact it tightly to conduct and of course it will disintegrate upon current, guarantee the slimes will contain tons of silver. With these facts known, melting is probably a better choice...

ps - in your skech, the anode and cathode are in the wrong order.

Edited to avoide confusion.


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## Harold_V (Jul 18, 2011)

I have reprocessed crystals from the silver cell by simply placing them in a basket, then placing an anode on top, to ensure that there is proper electrical contact. That works just fine, as I'm sure cement silver would work as well. The big problem with what you've presented is the extremely limited surface area. It will take a prolonged period of time to part the silver. That would be worthless in a situation where production was of importance. 

The real problem comes from the slimes, which accumulate on the filter. As long as you're unable to remove the anode silver, the slimes will accumulate until they're troublesome, eventually beginning to co-deposit (palladium can do that), or leading to depletion of your electrolyte. 

In general, I give your idea a thumbs down. 

You benefit in many ways by melting first---including removing oxides that would report in the slimes otherwise. 

The only reason I could re-process crystals is because they were nearly pure, and left only traces in the slimes. By the time they were gone, the anode in use as a connector was in full contact with the electrolyte, allowing me to remove the anode to remove slimes from the filter. 

Harold


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## stihl88 (Jul 18, 2011)

Thanks guys, i thought i had the leads the wrong way. It's been a while since i had my cell operating and late last night i didn't even think twice before i drew that picture.


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## munchies (Jul 21, 2011)

That is a very sexy bar!


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## scrapman1077 (Sep 18, 2011)

kadriver, Could you post the modification to a computer power supply for use in the silver cell ?
Thanks


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