# SILBRAZE 45 silver brazing alloy



## thegoldking (Apr 6, 2011)

looked on this forum to try and find out information on the possibilities of revovering silver from silver brazing rods. Apparently these ones are 45% silver.....info on the pack is.....cadmium free....melting range of 640 - 680c. i have a fair pile of older used pices that i melted into shots just for fun but would love to know a little more about recovering the silver from it...

Not terribly concerned about the fact that i may only get a tiny amount its more about learning the process and adding to my steady growing knowledge of my hobby,

possible i should spend as much time learning how to spell as looking back at what ive just written there is a few mistakes....Im aussie and i dont care.
brent


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## Harold_V (Apr 7, 2011)

Recovering the silver is brain-dead simple. Pour the material to "corn flakes" and digest in dilute nitric. Recover the silver on copper. 

Shame it has been melted. Could be you could have sold it as silver solder, then purchased silver with the money. Could have proven to be a win-win situation. 

Don't despair, however. Back in '80, I had, literally, hundreds of ounces of silver solder submitted for refining. Old stock made it very profitable, assuming there was no future need for silver solder. 

Harold


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## thegoldking (Apr 11, 2011)

thanks harold,
There is many packets of this silver braze at my work but at around 500 dollars for 1kg im sure the owner of the company wouldnt think to highly of it ...
thanks again for the help....ill be sure to give it a go soon..


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## cerise (Apr 25, 2011)

Harold those rods are made up of 15 % zinc 55%copper45%silver.What do you mean corn flake and silver on copper .Could you elaborate?


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## Claudie (Apr 25, 2011)

115% ? :|


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## samuel-a (Apr 25, 2011)

Claudie said:


> 115% ? :|



supper alloy


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## Drewbie (Apr 25, 2011)

http://www.silbraze.com/sba.html

If you can buy it at $500/kg, I'd say GET OUT THE CHEQUEBOOK!

Silver nearly hit $50/toz a few minutes ago.


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## Harold_V (Apr 25, 2011)

cerise said:


> Harold those rods are made up of 15 % zinc 55%copper45%silver.What do you mean corn flake and silver on copper .Could you elaborate?


Sure, no problem. 
Corn flake is the process of melting and pouring the molten metal to a deep pool of water, generally a steel or stainless bucket. Depth is important, as is water temperature, to prevent the molten stream from hitting bottom and soldering to the vessel. Strange as that may sound, it does happen. The results of this operation yield irregular flakes of alloy, reminiscent of corn flakes. They are generally quite thin and present a large surface area, which dissolves readily. 

In reality, if the pieces are small enough (no really large cross sections) you can simply dissolve the metal in dilute nitric. All of the constituents will dissolve easily. Once dissolved, you recover the silver (silver nitrate now) by placing pieces of copper in the solution (or pouring the solution over pieces of copper). They should be in a plastic bucket, so you don't risk breaking. If the solution isn't too highly concentrated with free nitric acid, silver will immediately start cementing on the copper, slowly dissolving the copper as the silver is recovered. When it has all been cemented, you wash the resulting silver well. With care, you can expect a purity of around 99% silver. It is then melted, poured as an anode, and further refined in a silver cell. 

Harold


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## lazersteve (Apr 26, 2011)

There is a video of this process on my website.

Steve


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## jrmycooke (Jan 17, 2012)

Goldking, how did you make out with your wire? I have a little over eight pounds of englehard 50% brazing wire and haven't decided which process yet, I'm thinking the cornflake route.


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