# Silver Brasing rod question???



## wop1969 (Mar 27, 2009)

Does anyone know what would happen if I put a 15%silver/85%copper brasing rod in AP?

Would it desolve the copper and leave the silver?

Is their any danger involved?


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## Lou (Mar 27, 2009)

You'd be left with AgCl.


No danger involved, acid from the usual dangers of working with a corrosive acid.

You could do this hot in a well-ventilated area. Hot HCl and hydrogen peroxide readily and visibly corrodes copper.


Lou


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## butcher (Mar 27, 2009)

I think alot of those silver brazing rods also contain nickle and phosphorous if my memory correct.


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## Platdigger (Mar 27, 2009)

Not sure Butcher. 15 plus 85 does equal 100.

I used to braze with some that was like the reverce.
85 or 90 silver, when I changed out compressors on heat pumps.

The Boss used to hand me a handful, and then hang on to it for a moment while he reminded me what the stuff cost the company.......
Silver was like 50 dollars an ounce at the time.......

Seems like he would say each time, this is about 300 dollars worth of rod. 
Randy


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## wop1969 (Mar 28, 2009)

Lou said:


> You'd be left with AgCl.



So with that do I go on to decanter the AgCL and do the 30% sulfuric and steel rod procces?


Platdigger, that is how I got them, scraps from HVac company.


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## Oz (Mar 28, 2009)

Dang Plat you have been doing appliance repair for some time to have seen $50 silver in the spike courtesy of the Hunts.


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## wop1969 (Mar 28, 2009)

butcher said:


> I think alot of those silver brazing rods also contain nickle and phosphorous if my memory correct.



All I can add to this is that I looked them up on the manufact website and they said 15/85 AG CU.

I hope its true  dont want to deal with any other metals, I got allot to learn as it is..


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## Platdigger (Mar 28, 2009)

Oz, that was really the only time I was in the air conditioning/heating industry. 
I really only worked in that field the last 6 months of trade school.

Wop, if you are left with silver chloride, the next step is to convert the chloride to silver oxide or silver metal by one of the methods descibed here.

If you were to instead use nitric, then you could cement the silver from that solution with copper, if you chose to.
Confusing enough.....?
Randy


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## wop1969 (Mar 28, 2009)

actualy for the first time I understood somthing very clearly.

This is the only method for me since I have recently lost my job and cant buy the chem to make the poormans AR and I dont want to use any nitric untill I feel very ready so for now Ill stick with HCL products 

Thanks for the info, I will post some results when I am done...


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## Oz (Mar 28, 2009)

Wop,

The best way to conserve on nitric if these rods are actually 15% Ag and 85%Cu is to use them for cementing silver nitrate solutions. The copper would do the cementing at these percentages and the 15% silver would drop to the bottom with the cementation.


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## Harold_V (Mar 28, 2009)

That's an excellent suggestion. Silver recovered at no expense. 

Harold


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## Oz (Mar 28, 2009)

Harold_V said:


> That's an excellent suggestion. Silver recovered at no expense.



Hmm… I don’t know where I learned that as I don’t recall it in Hokes :wink: 

Thanks once again Harold for expanding beyond the foundation that you learned from Hoke with practical experience and sharing it.


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## Harold_V (Mar 28, 2009)

I used to recover silver plate that way, assuming it was on a copper substrate. Because I melted copper to form large bars, I'd simply include anything that was plated in the melt, assuming it wasn't an alloy. You don't want to include any zinc, for obvious reasons. 

Harold


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## butcher (Mar 28, 2009)

here is some info on brazing rods, they are worth more to me as brazing rod than the silver from them.
http://www.silvaloy.com/techsheets.php


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## wop1969 (Mar 28, 2009)

butcher said:


> here is some info on brazing rods, they are worth more to me as brazing rod than the silver from them.
> http://www.silvaloy.com/techsheets.php



LOL


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## nicknitro (Jun 6, 2009)

Hey Wop,

I think butcher is right, at least from my experiences with brazing rods. The lower silver content ones will have about 5% Phosphorous as a flux. 80% copper. Yours may be different though, I use Harris Stay-Silv 15. I'm currently eating up a lot of nitirc to dissolve 850 grams worth. Thats like 690 grams of copper though. What is your experience? 

P.S. I learned this one from one of LazerSteve's Video's, Ag compounds can be toxic, especially AgCl, so even after you rinse and incinerate or what ever your process entails, when handleing silver compounds, wear skin protection, ie. gloves.

Good Luck, 

Nick


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## goldsilverpro (Jun 6, 2009)

> P.S. I learned this one from one of LazerSteve's Video's, Ag compounds can be toxic, especially AgCl, so even after you rinse and incinerate or what ever your process entails, when handleing silver compounds, wear skin protection, ie. gloves.



I think you've stated this before and I want to correct it. I don't know where you got all that about AgCl. I have doubts that Steve would say that. I would think that it would have a very low toxicity compared with more soluble Ag salts and compared with most other chemicals we use. I would guess that most any common Ag salt is less toxic than many of the other chemicals we use. You could probably take a bath in AgCl with no great problems. I'm no doctor but I would think that, if you were to ingest AgCl, it would pass right through. In order to be toxic, it seems to me it would have to dissolve in the body. As far as I know, AgCl dissolves in cyanide, thiosulfate, or ammonia, none of which are present in any great amount (if at all) in the body. 

A main danger of ingesting soluble Ag salts, such as AgNO3, is argyria, a condition where your skin turns permanently gray-blue. I can't see that even happening with AgCl, since it essentially doesn't dissolve in the body. In the U.S., Ag effluents have to be 1 ppm, or less. However, as I understand it, this figure is much higher in Europe.

The only real danger I can think of is when you melt AgCl, especially with a torch. It evaporates at a fairly low temperature and the white smoke produced is most definitely toxic, most probably to the lungs. I knew a guy that died from this, although he was working over a very large furnace. I do remember Steve and I discussing this early on in the forum.


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## Lou (Jun 6, 2009)

goldsilverpro said:


> > The only real danger I can think of is when you melt AgCl, especially with a torch. It evaporates at a fairly low temperature and the white smoke produced is most definitely toxic, most probably to the lungs. I knew a guy that died from this, although he was working over a very large furnace. I do remember Steve and I discussing this early on in the forum.



That white smoke is indeed *VERY * dangerous!!! I've had it happen to me once before ( I was wearing a mask) when I was melting a bunch of silver waste that still had AgCl in it--needless to say I piled on the borax and carbonate and that helped put an end to it. I still have some of the material that I never finished melting!

Silver really isn't too terribly bad for you. I'd take it any day over gold, or platinum, or lead, or cadmium, or a host of other metals. Lunar caustic is still used in hospitals as far as I know, though its use has decreased. You can eat off of silver for years and have a fine life, perhaps with a few less illnesses! Try that with lead...well, the Romans know best. :-/

The chief danger of AgNO3 as far as I could guess would be if one were to swallow it--then it would bind up all of the body's chloride and possibly lead to an electrolyte imbalance.

Lou


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## nicknitro (Jun 7, 2009)

Chris,

I never posted on AgCL's Toxicity. I have posted on not letting it dry out, and Steve corrected me as to the reason why. 

However, if you don't believe me about my previous statement as to Steve commenting on AgCl's toxicity, it is no secret, go to his site, choose siler Videos, then click on the first silver chloride video. I believ he states the fact within the first 20 seconds with butyl nitrate gloves on. 

Even if it weren't, is it good practice to handle any chemicals without gloves on? Why risk it, what if lead were involved unknowingly by the refiner. 

Thanks,
Nick


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## goldsilverpro (Jun 7, 2009)

Nick,



> However, if you don't believe me about my previous statement as to Steve commenting on AgCl's toxicity, it is no secret, go to his site, choose siler Videos, then click on the first silver chloride video. I believ he states the fact within the first 20 seconds with butyl nitrate gloves on.


I apologize for doubting you. Steve did say to wear gloves when working with Ag and, of course, that's a good idea when working with any chemicals. He did say that Ag compounds were toxic and that's true but he didn't say that they were more toxic than other chemicals. I felt that you were stressing that AgCl was more dangerous than other Ag compounds and that's not true. AgCl is probably the least dangerous silver compound because it is so insoluble. Also, as a class, as Lou suggested, the silver compounds are less dangerous than many other chemicals we work with.

I realize that you were just trying to keep people safe by telling them to wear gloves and that's good. However, I feel you were over stating the case and putting additional words in Steve's mouth that he didn't use. I felt that you could unnecessarily scare people into not working with silver materials.

Every chemical we work with is toxic, without exception. Even water is toxic if you drink enough of it. I seem to remember that the LD50 (lethal dose 50%) for water is about 25-30 pounds. Interestingly enough, the LD50 for ingesting marijuana is about 35 pounds. LD50 means that, if you fed the entire population that quantity, 50% of them would die.


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## lazersteve (Jun 7, 2009)

Nick,

I apologize if my choice of words in the video have mislead you in any way.

I always try to err on the side of caution when working with any chemical.

Silver nitrate can stain your skin for about a week, a really dark stain that shows up later and this is reason enough to wear your gloves. Silver chloride as GSP and Lou have already stated is toxic in vapor form, hence the warning about producing it. I learned this from GSP early on and thank him or pointing it out to me. 

I'm sorry for any confusion this has caused anyone.

Steve


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## butcher (Jun 7, 2009)

food spoons and utinsils were made of silver because it has an antibacterial effect, 
when I was a kid in kentucky, my grandma had a cow we milked for milk and butter, she had non of modern conveniences like no electricity, no road within three miles of her home, no indoor water or toilet, with no refridgerator we kept the milk it the spring water to keep it cold, she would keep a silver coin in it to help keep it from spoiling, 
silver can help to heal wounds, it can be a good medicine if used properly, but like many metals, some forms are fairly safe, many are used in medicines like mercury, but can be dangerous in certain forms, and if we don't deal with them properly even deadly, this is were education and common sense is a very important medicine. and thanks to all on this forum when we share our understanding and what we learn, we are not only helping them to get gold, but we help educate them and ourselve's to help keep us all healthy and safe, so keep studing asking questions and seeking the answers to them, it profits us all.


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## nicknitro (Jun 9, 2009)

Chris,

No problem. I hope I didn't piss you off too much, either, as I had stated before about silver being troublesome. I got corrected there, about silver fulminate. I readily admit, I know very little about silver, I am not a chemist, etc. etc. I just felt that was noteworthy from things I have seen here on the forum. 

Chris, I appreciate all your help, I'm sure it's been more than a few times you have posted resolutions for mine and countless other's problems. You can PM me anytime, if I post something off the scale, ever again. I most deffinitely wouldn't want to see anyone harmed from advice I have given, that is why I usually only try to help with topics I am experienced with, or are basic issues. Usually if I am unfamiliar, I leave it alone, or if incomplete, I advise to look into further help from more experienced forum members such as yourself, Steve, Noxx, Lou, Butcher, Jaun, etc. ("Sorry if I left You Out") 

Thanks Again Chris, and all the Forum Memebers,

Nick


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