bhilton
Well-known member
Hi all,
I attempted to do a gold inquartation with some sterling silver - unfortunately, I think the material was not all sterling and had some tin in it somewhere. It was a necklace a friend gave me.
After inquartation I boiled it in dilute nitric and it appears I had dissolved all or most of the base metals - I moved those metals to a separate aqua regia batch.
I first noticed the problem when I poured the (still semi-hot) dilute nitric containing what I thought would be silver and copper to a separate jar I have which contained silver and copper nitrates already.
As soon as my semi-hot solution entered the separate jar - which already had a piece of copper flat stock in it, a pile of fluffy white crystals jumped out and coated the bottom of the jar (maybe because mixing the solutions, the temperature dropped low enough to cause what I believe to be metastannic acid to rear its ugly head. At the same time the copper flat stock started cementing out silver.
Now I believe I have a jar with around 1/4" of white fluffy crystals on the bottom, plus some floating around in solution and 15-20g of cemented silver!
Any ideas how I can recover the silver?
Thank you all!
Bill
EDIT: I fixed the Title.
I attempted to do a gold inquartation with some sterling silver - unfortunately, I think the material was not all sterling and had some tin in it somewhere. It was a necklace a friend gave me.
After inquartation I boiled it in dilute nitric and it appears I had dissolved all or most of the base metals - I moved those metals to a separate aqua regia batch.
I first noticed the problem when I poured the (still semi-hot) dilute nitric containing what I thought would be silver and copper to a separate jar I have which contained silver and copper nitrates already.
As soon as my semi-hot solution entered the separate jar - which already had a piece of copper flat stock in it, a pile of fluffy white crystals jumped out and coated the bottom of the jar (maybe because mixing the solutions, the temperature dropped low enough to cause what I believe to be metastannic acid to rear its ugly head. At the same time the copper flat stock started cementing out silver.
Now I believe I have a jar with around 1/4" of white fluffy crystals on the bottom, plus some floating around in solution and 15-20g of cemented silver!
Any ideas how I can recover the silver?
Thank you all!
Bill
EDIT: I fixed the Title.