# My first adventure into silver refining.



## AuPure (Dec 23, 2019)

Hi everyone. So I'm getting things set up to do my first silver cell here soon. Probably won't fire up the cell till after the first of the year. But I thought I'd go ahead and start this thread. So far I'm not asking for help, but PLEASE feel free to share and tips and info you have. I'm always learning and love to find out how others do things. Everything I share here has probably been shared on the forum 100 times over. But I like to share pictures and talk to like minded people about things as I go along. It's a big part of the fun in this hobby for me. 

So to kick this thing off here are a couple of pictures of what I've done so far. 

This was silver contacts from some type of motor starter I believe. My plan at the moment is to use the cemented silver from dissolving these to make my electrolyte. The rest of my feed stock is sterling. I wanted to process these first because I know they will have more than just copper in their alloy. And I don't want large quantities of unknown metals going into my cell if I can avoid it.

So I dissolved these contacts in dilute nitric. 50% nitric and 50% distilled water. You know the drill. They dissolved very nicely. And you can see by the color that there probably isn't much copper in there. 

The weird thing is, after letting the solution cool overnight I was treated to these awesome looking crystals in my solution. They are flat plate type crystals, and clear as ice. Don't know what they are so I saved them in some distilled water for later investigation. 

Before I left for work today I dropped in a copper buss bar to cement the silver out. It was an instant reaction. Just plain mesmerizing. But alas, I had to stop watching and head to work. When I get home I'll get some more good pictures. 

To be continued.....

Thanks for taking the time to read this.


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## kurtak (Dec 24, 2019)

The crystals are silver nitrate crystals

A hot concentrated solution will hold more dissolved metal then a cold solution - so when the solution cools the crystals develop

in the pic that shows the contact point dissolving it shows close to 200 mil of solution 

in the pic of the crystals it shows the solution right at 150 mil of solution

so while dissolving (with heat) some of the water evaporated off which made the solution more concentrated (less water - more acid) meaning the solution was no longer 50% distilled water 50 % nitric 

so while the solution was still hot it allowed the silver to stay dissolved - once the solution cooled there was not enough water to allow the silver remain dissolved thereby allowing the silver nitrate crystal to form

adding water (distilled) to bring the solution back to the 50/50 water/nitric point will dissolve the silver nitrate crystals

when you cement your silver your don't want to do it with a 50/50 water/acid solution - you want to dilute it with double the water (example; - if you start with 100 mil water & 100 mil acid - when you do the cementing you want to go to 200 mil water 100 mil acid) AND - you want to stir it every once in awhile during the cementing process

don't have the time right now to explain the reason for that

Kurt


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## g_axelsson (Dec 24, 2019)

Those large clear crystals looks like silver nitrate to me. Wonderful crystals!

Göran


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## AuPure (Dec 24, 2019)

You guys nailed it! I had put distilled water over the crystals before I went to work. When I got home they were fully dissolved. So just out of curiosity I placed in a piece of bare copper wire. It got covered with silver right away. So that went back into the main solution that was still cementing silver.

And it was still cementing silver because of exactly what you said, kurt. I wasn't home to shake the silver cement off of the copper bus bar every now and then. So the silver built up as a very thick crystal on the copper. I'm assuming this prevented the rest of the solution from contacting the copper and brought the process to a halt. I knocked the chunky silver crystals off of the copper bar and everything took back off as normal. So I checked it and shook the bar about every 20 min after that until it completed. 

Ps. I did dilute to 400ml before adding the copper bar. 8) 

Here are some more fun pictures.


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## goldgee35 (Apr 18, 2020)

Did you clean this silver if so how.... Or did you go straight to the melt...


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## nickton (Aug 24, 2020)

you should just need to rinse in distilled water to clean it I think.


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