# Cement Silver



## artyfo61 (May 10, 2022)

This is the first time I tried to create cement silver and its not going well. I had 200 g of sterling silver and 200 g of silver flake, de-plated from silver plated cutlery. I put 400 g of distilled water into a beaker, flamed cleaned the 200 g of sterling, added that to the beaker, and just added the dried silver flake from the cutlery to the beaker. Then I put it on a hot plate at low temperature, and added 250ml of nitric. I subsequently added nitric in quantities of 50, 25,25,25,25. I let the process go for about 2 hours until the brown fumes were gone and there was no action in the beaker. Then took it off the hot plate and let it cool for an hour. This is where it gets troublesome. I hooked up buckner funnel to a beaker, added a filter and began pouring into the funnel. Ugh! It seems the silver flake didn't go into solution, clogged up the funnel and minimal solution went thru the filter. Instead of a nice blue copper solution, I got this gray mud. I was planning on dropping the silver with a copper bar, but it seems I may have taken a short cut and my filter is filled with silver, right? So now what do I do? Just hot water wash the silver and then dry it? Any help is appreciates. Thank you.

Artyfo61


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## 4metals (May 10, 2022)

How did you de-plate the Silver from Silver plated cutlery? Are you sure it’s Silver?


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## artyfo61 (May 10, 2022)

artyfo61 said:


> This is the first time I tried to create cement silver and its not going well. I had 200 g of sterling silver and 200 g of silver flake, de-plated from silver plated cutlery. I put 400 g of distilled water into a beaker, flamed cleaned the 200 g of sterling, added that to the beaker, and just added the dried silver flake from the cutlery to the beaker. Then I put it on a hot plate at low temperature, and added 250ml of nitric. I subsequently added nitric in quantities of 50, 25,25,25,25. I let the process go for about 2 hours until the brown fumes were gone and there was no action in the beaker. Then took it off the hot plate and let it cool for an hour. This is where it gets troublesome. I hooked up buckner funnel to a beaker, added a filter and began pouring into the funnel. Ugh! It seems the silver flake didn't go into solution, clogged up the funnel and minimal solution went thru the filter. Instead of a nice blue copper solution, I got this gray mud. I was planning on dropping the silver with a copper bar, but it seems I may have taken a short cut and my filter is filled with silver, right? So now what do I do? Just hot water wash the silver and then dry it? Any help is appreciates. Thank you.
> 
> Artyfo61


I de-plated with sea salt and distilled water. Most (about95%) was Wm. Rogers and said silver plate on the utensils.


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## Stibnut (May 10, 2022)

You ended up forming silver chloride, which forms when any chloride source (e.g. sodium chloride, NaCl) reacts with silver ions. It is insoluble in water and nitric acid. You can convert it to silver metal by first treating it with sodium hydroxide (NaOH aka lye) or another strong alkali to form silver oxide, and then using sugar to reduce this to silver metal. Here's a video by sreetips on the process:



If you decide to do this, be sure to use proper PPE and be aware that both NaOH addition and the sugar-lye reaction are very exothermic. The latter one will tend to cause boiling and often spatters the highly corrosive NaOH solution everywhere. It's best to do it in a beaker contained within a 5-gallon bucket to catch the spattering or boilover.


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## artyfo61 (May 11, 2022)

Thank you for your help. I'll give it a shot today and get back to you with the results.


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## Lightspeed (May 12, 2022)

If there are metal flakes in your filter, they are not silver, if there was silver attached to the flakes it will be in solution, the metal flakes are Nickel from epns plating.
The guys are right, you have mixed Silver chloride into your digested silver nitrate solution, this is also clogging your filter, probably more so than the Nickel flakes.


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## artyfo61 (May 12, 2022)

Stibnut said:


> You ended up forming silver chloride, which forms when any chloride source (e.g. sodium chloride, NaCl) reacts with silver ions. It is insoluble in water and nitric acid. You can convert it to silver metal by first treating it with sodium hydroxide (NaOH aka lye) or another strong alkali to form silver oxide, and then using sugar to reduce this to silver metal. Here's a video by sreetips on the process:
> 
> 
> 
> If you decide to do this, be sure to use proper PPE and be aware that both NaOH addition and the sugar-lye reaction are very exothermic. The latter one will tend to cause boiling and often spatters the highly corrosive NaOH solution everywhere. It's best to do it in a beaker contained within a 5-gallon bucket to catch the spattering or boilover.



I let the whole mess settle overnight. Next morning, there was silver chloride on the bottom and a really dark green solution on top. I decanted the solution, tested with HCL, got the "cottage cheese" and added copper bars. To the silver chloride, I added lye and sugar. Got silver from both batches. Thank you for your help.


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## artyfo61 (May 12, 2022)

Lightspeed said:


> If there are metal flakes in your filter, they are not silver, if there was silver attached to the flakes it will be in solution, the metal flakes are Nickel from epns plating.
> The guys are right, you have mixed Silver chloride into your digested silver nitrate solution, this is also clogging your filter, probably more so than the Nickel flakes.


You are correct also. I did use a few pieces of cutlery marked "EPNS." Thank you for your help.


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