# Silver bars from my temporary storage and waste solution



## ZiegenSauger (Oct 12, 2020)

Hello!

After I spent approx. a year studying the hands on processes of home recovering and refining, Silver was my first real life tentative. First I generated a small 1 Ozt bar, later I refined and added more I recovered from my left overs and failed attempt:



The bar at the top is my official first (I incorporated the contaminated one on this). It is a nice 4 1/2 Ozt first pour!!
With this in hand (I assume many of you been through this, my wife called it my pet), I dove deep in the ridiculous amount of waste I generated during my learning and managed to recover enough for the bottom bar. It is a 3 1/2 Ozt "decent" bar (considering my Cast Master electric furnace's coil did not resist Ag and Au more than 5 times ).

I decided to keep this pace pouring ~4 Ozt bars as I accumulate Ag from cementing or Lye/Sugar.

Here is the challenge I have: during my learning steps I used scrap silver plated stuff from yard sales and silver plated stuff from parents and grandparents.

I learned in the forum through many many threads that, for hobby, recover silver from plated is awesome, economically and labor is not worth it.

For the second bar I just dipped a handful of flatware in each bucket and let the excess acid to strip the Ag out, which worked fine, however, I have 14 lbs of old flatware. Almost no monetary or collectible value (whatever I had that would yield me some bucks I sold on my eBay store like, for ex., a Christofle set and some individual Tiffany's items).

Would any of you recommend me the "least bad" process? It is only ~120g on the table, but for fund and for training would be great.

By the way, I have trained almost anything you can imagine to recover and refine Ag from plated, with the exception of any type of electrolysis which I do not have yet the capability.

Big thank you.


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## ZiegenSauger (Oct 14, 2020)

Hello!

I decide to turn a desktop PC power supply into a workbench power supply. I guess I won't spend a dime (I'm an Engineer and I have a long set lab/workshop and a lot of scrap/supplies/salvage).

I will have a very simple set up, a 1/2L plastic jar with water and couple of TBS of table salt and process the items. It will be insane in terms of time - at the end the set has 109 pc.
(I listed on eBay a while back https://www.ebay.com/itm/174125554633 if anyone is curious to see what I am talking about).
I do not think I will process more than 2 a day. At then end my rough initial estimate is 200g of recovered silver.

Let's see. I will update my processing.

Cheers!!!


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## kurtak (Oct 15, 2020)

ZiegenSauger said:


> I will have a very simple set up, a 1/2L plastic jar with water and couple of TBS of table salt and process the items.



So if I understand right you are planning to run an H2O cell for de-plating silver plated items as discussed in this thread

:arrow: Processing SilverPlate With H2O Cell

if that is correct - then per the underlined in the above quote - you don't need &/or want to use that much salt - plan old tap water will work

the reason (in part) that plan tap water works is the chlorine in the tap water allows for better current flow (as compared to distilled water) which is in part what helps to make the cell work

So adding a "bit" of salt - which is a chloride - can help to improve the current flow

However I believe (but am not sure) that to much chlorine/chloride can & likely will cause (at least some) silver to convert to silver chloride in the de-plating process

The more chlorine/chloride in the the water the more silver chloride the cell is likely to produce (I believe)

A couple table spoons of salt in just a 1/2L water - I believe - is way more then need for the cell to work

In other words - a bit of chlorine/chloride allows for better current flow for the cell to work - but - to much chloride is likely to create silver chloride - instead of de-plating the silver as silver &/or silver oxide - which can go direct to melt

silver chloride needs to be converted back to silver or silver oxide before melting - so you want to avoid creating silver chloride

Plan tap water will work - at most - in a 1/2L water - I would not add more then 1/8 tea spoon salt --- & that would depend on how much chlorine is in you local tap water to start with - so may not need to add any salt

Kurt


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## ZiegenSauger (Oct 15, 2020)

Thank you so much Kurt! Really really appreciate you thorough explanation indeed.
Duly noted, and that is exactly what I am going to do.
Yesterday I dedicated half day building my workbench power supply. Can't help but adding some cool gizmos to make it cooler from the outside (little usability but even so) like volt and amp meters, regulators, 60s Lost in Space look etc, at the end it is great part of the fun.

Will proceed based on your instructions and will update after the process is running.

Thank you very much indeed!!!!


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