# Couldn't be more pleased (first silver bars)



## MGH (Nov 3, 2013)

While scouting around for parts to complete my fume hood setup, I figured it was finally time to melt some more silver that I had refined a while ago, which has been sitting in powdered form in a beaker for months (it’s just cemented silver, which started out pretty dirty, and then cleaned up a bit with a wash in dilute sulfuric acid as described starting in April 2013 in this thread http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=15826&start=20#p183115). I could not be more pleased with the outcome.

I made the mold and poured the bars in the same afternoon. The mold is a block of graphite about 1 ¼ inches thick. I used a ¼ inch radius router bit to drill out the shape of the bars; 3cm long by 1.4cm wide, and the depth of the mold is about 1.7cm (height of bars is a little less than 1cm). Each bar is a little over one troy ounce.

Thank you once again to all the great members of this forum for providing so many historical posts on this subject (heat the mold, pour quickly and controlled, don’t use too much flux, etc.). As far as these bars go, I think I was able to do it right the first time, not having to deal with ugly slag or misshapen bars.

-Matt H.


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## yar (Nov 3, 2013)

Nice looking bars Matt, congradulations. Do you know the purity?


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## MGH (Nov 3, 2013)

yar said:


> Nice looking bars Matt, congradulations. Do you know the purity?


Kind of. I had previously melted a 20 gram button from this same batch of powder. A few days ago I had that button analyzed by XRF with a result of 100%. I know, that doesn't seem plausible. It was a new Niton DXL, and the guy was trying it out on several different items (not just mine). It seemed to read okay overall, finding differences in melted sterling, karat jewelry, and other “refined silver” that he got from elsewhere. Mine read right at 100%. I know this XRF is not top off the line, and maybe it didn’t really have a good bullion calibration in the first place, so who knows for sure. But I still like my little bars.


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## butcher (Nov 4, 2013)

I like your silver bars also, Nice.


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## samuel-a (Nov 10, 2013)

Excellent job!


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## MGH (Nov 11, 2013)

Thanks for the compliments everyone. I poured two more bars this weekend to use up the rest of the refined silver powder I had on hand, and clear things out so I could more easily concentrate on setting up my fume hood. After that, hopefully there will be many more bars on the way (looking forward to the first one ounce gold bar...)


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