I'm new

[cmethowusa]

Hi All;

I'm a newbie and am currently trying to figure what's happening with a test silver dissolving situation I'm in. I put 150 ml of nitric in a beaker and added 1 oz of old beat up silver coins. It is being heated but I am seeing no exciting dissolving. It's been about an hour and the coins look newer but undissolved. The nitric went from clear to a slight yellowish tint. Could someone tell me what I should be expecting?

 

[goldsilverpro]

I'm a newbie and am currently trying to figure what's happening with a test silver dissolving situation I'm in. I put 150 ml of nitric in a beaker and added 1 oz of old beat up silver coins. It is being heated but I am seeing no exciting dissolving. It's been about an hour and the coins look newer but undissolved. The nitric went from clear to a slight yellowish tint. Could someone tell me what I should be expecting?

Something is very wrong. It should have dissolved by now, with great vigor and brown fumes. How strong is the nitric? Which coins? Need more detail.

I deleted your other post because it was identical to this one. Duplicate posting is not necessary. Don't worry, we'll see the first one.

 

[cmethowusa]

I bought the nitric from a chemical supplier in Houston. It's 70% nitric. I got 2.5 liters for 47+ tax. I kept failing with potassium nitrate, and the expense of messing with the nitrate, sulfuric, etc. made $50 look pretty good.

The coins are supposedly 80 - 90% silver. I do have a small sterling bracelt I could throw in there as well.

 

[cmethowusa]

I put a sterling bracelt inthe nitric and had to get out of the way. Fortunately I read the post about insuring you have plenty of volume in the beaker. I got a lot of fuming nitric but my fan directed it outside. After a short period, the bracelet was gone as was the coins. Also a lot of the nitric. I dropped in some copper with a string on it like Lazer Steve showed in his video and the dark green started changing to blue. I've got a lot of grey looking stuff on the bottom now and am letting the copper dissolve. This was a small experiment before starting to refine a big bunch of sterling I hoarded for the last couple of years.

The info on this forum was invaluable especially the safety recommendations which I followed. Now, if I can get the filtering and recovery right, I may have my first 99.9 silver.

Thanks guys.

 

[jimdoc]

You should continue this in your previous post, to make it easier to follow. Also be carefull with acids indoors. It is not a good idea, in fact it is a very bad one.
Jim

 

[cmethowusa]

I'm sorry, this new to me. Do I go back to the previous post and submit from there?

 

[jimdoc]

One of the moderators should be able to fix it. Just in the future it is best to keep one post going for the same topic. The forum gets confusing enough as it is.
Jim

 

[goldsilverpro]

Nitric won't dissolve stainless at all. Nitric can do a good job of cleaning stainless but it will dissolve most other metals. To me, it doesn't sound like those coins are 80% - 90% silver. Are they government coins?

 

[cmethowusa]

No, they are some foreign coins. I tested them and they do have silver in them but I don't know the %. I put an old sterling bracelet in the nitric and the brew took off big time. The bracelt as well as the coins are gone and I've got darg green beaker now. I tied a string to a hunk of copper like in Lazersteves video and it is precipitating like he showed and turning blue. Should I let the copper dissolve and add more if the reaction is still occurring?

 

[lazersteve]

I merged the topics.

Hopefully you let the solution with the dissolved material in it settle and siphoned the liquid off of the sediment. If you did not separate the leftover solids from* the green liquid your silver will not come out very clean.

Steve

* Edit spelling

 

[cmethowusa]

The copper is still bubbling a little so I have not done any filtering yet. I've got a 1 quart pyrex and a stainless strainer. I'm planning on putting a coffee filter in the strainer and then pouring the liquid through it. The gunk on the bottom is silver, I hope. I watched your video on using the copper as an precipitate and it really cleared up my confusion from reading heinz 57 recipes. I am planning on doing this on a larger scale but I wanted to try a small test first. Maybe someday I'll start messing with gold but I have been lucky in finding a lot of sterling to begin with. Gold is much harder to find, duh...

I have a lot of old canadian 80% silver coins that I will probably refine. I don't think I will do anything with the US coins I have. When I get my other projects completed I am going to try and build a small propane furnace. The electric melters and even propane melters for sale seem way over priced to me. At some point, the glassware, chemicals, melters, etc. could out cost the product.

 

[Oz]

The copper is still bubbling a little so I have not done any filtering yet

I think you may have missed Steve's point. After you dissolve your silver containing scrap you want to be sure you have no solids left in your solution. If you start cementing your dissolved silver on copper with solids still in your beaker you will have them as contaminates in with your reasonably clean cement silver.