Non-Chemical Cufflink disassembly

[lustreking56]

Hi, I'm new here and just starting to learn about refining. I've been a vintage dealer for a long time and tired of giving away profits on scrap. Also have a science background and am very excited to learn and start refining my own scrap. I have a test kit and basic tools.

I have two questions on a cufflink and it's probably very simple but I wasn't able to find answers. The cufflink is marked sterling, and has a 10K gold horse bust attached to the face of the silver cufflink.

One, how do you disassemble the mechanism to remove the spring (and any other parts that aren't silver or gold)? Two, how would I remove the 10K horse emblem that is attached to the sterling oval base?



Thanks for the help!

 

[nickvc]

You could just dissolve the silver in nitric leaving the gold it may also leave the spring and then filter the solution and cement the silver with copper or add salt or hcl to form silver chloride.

 

[cosmetal]

If you are Ok with destroying any vintage value, I would suggest:

1.) Cut the link mechanism open with a jewelers saw or snips.
2,) Use a neodymium magnet to grab any ferrous materials.

or

1.) Place in a ceramic melting cup and use an oxy/fuel torch to melt it. Ag melts +/- 962C / Au melts +/- 1064C / and iron +/- 1500C. Once melted, remove your iron/steel pieces using SS tweezers (+/- 1510C MP). You'll end up with a button of Au/Ag. Obviously, slightly more dangerous than the above.

or

1.) Slowly heat the assembly with the oxy/fuel flame. Chances are that both the cuff mechanism and the 10K horse are silver soldered to the Ag unit. Silver solder should easily flow +/- 618C to 900C hereby allowing you to separate the three pieces.

Peace and health,
James

 

[lustreking56]

Thank you both nickvc and cosmetal! I'll try the slow heating to melt the silver solder, and mechanically removing the spring to start. If that all fails, I'll heat up more as suggested to melt the Ag/Au together into a button.

 

[nickvc]

If you can separate by heating the silver to remove the gold then you will still have silver solder attached to it which you could remove using nitric leaving a decent piece of metal, if you melt it all then to get your gold you are going to have to dissolve all the silver and be left with a very small amount of powder which may not be that easy to collect as I suspect it will be very fine so my suggestion would be either dissolve all the silver or remove the gold using a torch.