# 2lb bag of Sterling Silver Jewelry.



## LeftyTheBandit (Nov 11, 2009)

Went to an auction and all that I could get was this 2lb bag of assorted gawd awful sterling silver jewelry. The gold items were off the wall so I figured I'd give this $15 bag of jewelry a shot.

I'm frankly a little perplexed what I should do with the big old dime store gems that litter all the jewelry. This is why I'm not just blasting it into an anode and using a silver cell. I am also not convinced that my bag is purely sterling silver, so making an anode for a cell with unknown purity concerns me.

[*] My 1st plan would be to put a torch to it to incinerate any bio's or lacquer finish.

[*] I will then soak in a warm HCL bath to hopefully eliminate tin or other base metals available.

[*] Filter.

[*] Incinerate to burn off the HCl.

[*] Put the silver in a beaker with De-ionized water. 
(I'm hoping this is close to distilled water as I can get this from a water De-ionizer at work, used for topping up batteries. Will De-ionized water be chlorine free?).

[*] Slowly add with a pipit small amounts of nitric acid until the silver is digested.

[*] Use copper to cement the silver.

[*] Make anode from cemented silver.

[*] Drop pennies (95% zinc) in the copper nitrate to drop copper.

Is this a good methodology for treating suspect sterling silver jewelry?

Any pre-steps other than mechanical to remove the gems?


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## butcher (Nov 12, 2009)

not being the best with silver here my suggestion, inceneration alway good, I would try to seperate items by content the sterling seperated from plated,and low grade junk,if sterling items look antique or would bring more valus as is, ( I woud save some for inquarting gold a later date) ,scratching and drop of nitric test will help determine sterling or junk, if you cannot see right off which pile, HCl with or without peroxide, would be ok for junk plated, but would be worthless for sterling, although would help you be able to tell if it was sterling, and ridding inceneration Hcl before nitric smart move, you dont want to make aqua regia, I can see you are doing your home work , and are a fast learner, regular nitric is by far the best, but may be expensive for you and hard to obtain, poor mans would work, but sulfate if in excess may precipitate little silver, so making it to stoichometry will be best, and distilling even better, keeping acid content high will also keep silver in solution and not precipitating as sulfate (if some silver sulfate precipitates, this little can be rinsed, incenerated and saved for another batch,or just left in rinsed filter, and added to filter pile for later), copper to replace silver from nitric solution is a better choice than making silver chloride. the copper nitrate, can be saved to generate nitric or for a cell project later or other project. or as you stated using zink to replace copper and neutralizing acid. distilled or deionized neither have any chlorides, I would use my well water, it sounds as though you have a good handle on this, diluting nitric to 35% will release less NOx and most likely make your nitric go further, as you already know nitric on some base metals can get really violent, take care here, slow additions and a little time to see reaction is good, as they sometimes have time delay's and react violently after few minutes, and take precaution's with these deadly corrosive brown fumes, 

Hopefully others with alot of silver expierience will give you more easy to understand and better help than I can.

(and keep that ammonia water and silver in mind, and wet if made or acidify it. you wouldn't want to loose your nickname 
bandit).


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## nickvc (Nov 12, 2009)

if it is silver you had a good buy..id check ebay before you do anything, stone set jewellery can fetch good prices even if its not to your taste someone will like it, and you can get way over silver value for some of it ,i know ive done it loads of times with some real tat.


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## goldsilverpro (Nov 12, 2009)

I agree with butcher. First, sort all the material based on markings. Stuff that is marked Sterling or 925 is almost guaranteed to be what it says it is. Stuff without any markings are almost guaranteed to be plated or made of something else, such as pot metal. There are exceptions in both categories but, in my experience, they are fairly rare. The only material worth processing would be the sterling.


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## lazersteve (Nov 12, 2009)

A magnet may also prove useful to weed out some of the non-sterling plated stuff.

Steve


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## LeftyTheBandit (Nov 12, 2009)

Is it normal for the numbers to be extremely small, and I mean loupe x10 small. Or just a lion symbol? I will check Wikipedia for sterling symbols. I remember something about lions with one leg raised or is it two... :| 

Time to dig out my loupe x10. My eyes have betrayed me, I see small stamps just cant read them.


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## Oz (Nov 12, 2009)

My eyes are not the best anymore either but I rave run a good deal of silver and much of the sterling jewelry is stamped small enough I grab my loupe. This is a worthwhile exercise as some of the junk silver contains things that will make a mess with nitric.


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## patnor1011 (Nov 12, 2009)

lefty try here:
http://www.925-1000.com/


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## Harold_V (Nov 12, 2009)

Part of learning to refine is learning to test properly. This is an excellent opportunity to learn how to test for silver. 

Aside from the lion, look for markings that say 925 (sterling), 900 (coin) or even lower. Some Scandinavian countries make silver as low as 720 fine (used in flatware). 

Each time you discover a new marking, explore it, using Schwerters, or nitric. You will get to the point were you will recognize silver almost at a glance. 

Be aware that there is a small amount of jewelry marked sterling that is not silver at all. It comes from Mexico, and is generally made of nickel. This is yet another reason that you should become familiar with silver items, and testing. 

Harold


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## pinwheel (Nov 12, 2009)

I find that almost half of marked silver jewelry is actually silver over copper or brass. I also find a lot of unmarked stuff that is pure. Especially heavy native american stuff.

You can get a real cheap silver test solution over ebay. Its very easy to test silver purity.


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## LeftyTheBandit (Nov 13, 2009)

Thank you everyone.

I have nitric to test. 

It's just the volume of necklace chains all tangled. :roll: 

I will definitely use the magnet 1st.

I more or less wanted to check on my posted process to see if I was missing a step. 

I need to go back to Hoke as I think I'm missing a sulfuric addition to HCL final wash. (tin)

Then I believe a heated HCl wash. A boiling water wash (lead Chloride I believe.)

There are three nice lockets but they seem too bright of a silver to be sterling. Two nice bracelets, one extremely intricate and one just looks good. (Hidden from wife or it's gone) 

If I test and get SS together, can I melt it with gems or is it going to snap crackle pop on me? Karat I just trim off gems and inquart and AR the gems stuff. I have found removing gems to be quite difficult :| .


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## jimdoc (Nov 13, 2009)

"There are three nice lockets but they seem too bright of a silver to be sterling. Two nice bracelets, one extremely intricate and one just looks good. (Hidden from wife or it's gone) "

These bright silver lockets may just be rhodium plated.
Jim


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## pinwheel (Nov 13, 2009)

> I have found removing gems to be quite difficult



Use a hammer.

Sometimes brute force is the best answer. In scrap metal work it applies more than not. A flat brass hammer should work well. I myself prefer to remove the stones and gems and save them. If they are difficult you will need a loop and small pliers or even some hand held map gas to get things moving. I have quite a neat collection of things like that in little bins. Its pretty impressive after a while. I figure I will sell them someday to a jewelry maker.


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## SilverNitrate (Nov 15, 2009)

Early on in silver chemistry, I had taken a conc. H2SO4 (virgin sulfuric acid) and completely dissolved sterling silver in the form of teapots and flatware (in a glass pot on hotplate) This resulted in crystals of Ag2SO4 (which were rinsed of the copper sulfate) that was later processed into silver metal. The wet portion containing silver and copper sulfates were mixed with water and boiled with copper so the silver cemented out. The rxn was rather fast and doesn't fill the air with thick fumes as like using nitric acid.


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## goldsilverpro (Nov 15, 2009)

Where you been, SilverNitrate? It's been awhile. We missed you.


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## SilverNitrate (Nov 15, 2009)

goldsilverpro said:


> Where you been, SilverNitrate? It's been awhile. We missed you.


lol. been kinda behind since the site was updated... thought I was booted!


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## Anonymous (Apr 5, 2010)

*URL removed by moderator*
In order to make sure you are getting right price on your broken gold, know the market price of gold which is an important piece of data to anyone. Presently, one of the most simple and fastest ways to know the current price is through Internet by browsing different companies that buy and sell commodities, such as gold. On their website, these companies clearly display the current price as well as keep the data updated regularly. If anyone interested to by their gold jewelry, visit a right resource for this.

*This individual has been banned from the board for two weeks. Should he return and spam the board again, he will be banned permanently.

Harold*


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## Palladium (Apr 5, 2010)

That sounds like a commercial.

Since that's your first post what do you do for a living ?

Welcome.


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## Oz (Apr 5, 2010)

It is not his first post, GSP had to delete his first 3.

Vnspramod,

You have had 3 previous posts deleted by a moderator (http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3249&p=61511#p61511) for posting your Joel's Gold links. I have politely asked you to place such in the proper place; Refiners, buyers, assayers, at the bottom of the forum.

What do you not understand?


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## Harold_V (Apr 5, 2010)

Oz said:


> It is not his first post, GSP had to delete his first 3.
> 
> Vnspramod,
> 
> ...


I have banned him for two weeks for spamming the board. If, at any time, readers find a response from him, even under a different name, let me know and I'll ban him permanently.

Harold


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