Non-Chemical Questions on refining silver contacts w/ Nitric acid

[g_axelsson]

Well my burner didn't work, either I didn't leave them on long enough or it doesn't get hot enough.

What type of solder do they normally use between the silver and copper/brass?

Smaller contact points like this are often spot welded to the base metal. So no solder at all in that case.

Göran

 

[g_axelsson]

The water went straight to blue which was odd because the previous smaller batches I experimented with went from a emerald green then blue when I added the copper pieces to it.

Emerald green can be caused by several reasons. Since copper nitrate is blue and silver nitrate is colorless the green color comes from something else.

- NOx gases dissolved adds red to a solution and that would make it looking more green, it would go away when the reaction calms down and the NOx gases leaves the solution.

- If there are some palladium in the contact points the red palladium nitrate gives the solution a green color that stays even after the reaction is over.
For a good example of this, look at the solution when I removed the palladium contamination from a gold button via inquartion.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=19840#p236827

Göran