Silver questions

[Paul Allee]

I recently inherited several pounds of silver plated flatware and platters and such. I am familiar with the standard protocol for deplating or some methods out there, but I was wondering if you couldn't take some larger items and put them in a salt water solution or maybe a bleach solution and use electricity to strip the plating off. I think if there's chlorine present it would form silver chloride and settle out. Couldn't you just collect all the silver chloride in the bottom of a bucket and it wouldn't even reduce on a cathode? Like if it comes off the piece at the anode wouldn't it just settle out right away and not make it to the cathode since silver chloride is insoluble?

A seperate question: one of these items was totally black with oxide. It had a small purple patch on it. Just out of curiosity is it possible that some trace gold was a part of the silver plating and became colloidal when the silver around it turned to oxide?

Last question about silver, I have a 10k gold ring I also inherited. Naturally some of the silver making up the other 59% had produced tarnish. Does anyone know if any of the gold atoms in the ring would physically come off with the silver oxide? Just for understanding the science. Thank you to anyone who reads this!

 

[Martijn]

Yes, I use it, its called a salt water cell. You can also use tapwater without salt, lots of posts about that.

I would not use bleach solution.

What was the color of the 10K ring? If any yellow, there was more than only silver in it.
As to releasing of atoms by oxidizing of silver, i don't think it will be significant enough to use a separation tool. If any gold gets loosened at all. i've seen a video where a gold button from amalgam is put in nitric to make it look more yellow, taking the silver from the surface and possibly fooling any buyer in thinking it is relatively pure gold.
In this case gold is not released from the button but silver is, so i think your ring oxidizing wil not work like that.
in fact, are 10K rings supposed to oxidize?