hey guys i have a few pounds of scrap silver ( no gems ) and a few pounds of silver plater/gold plated/gold filled is this stuff worth refining? like i did the math and i think id lose money... but thats if i bought nitric acid and hydrochloric acid and made aqua regia to refine with... is there a cheaper way i should be doing this? or should i just melt down the silver and make 925 bars lol and only refine my gold that i have....
silver scrap
- Thread starter Woolf
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golddigger69
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Sell the silver and gold filled scrap as is, no further work is necessary. E-Bay or this board are your best bets.
Process the gold plated scrap according to instructions found allover this board.
The silver plated stuff is a bit trickier, look in the silver section of this MB.
After removing the silver plate, the remander should be brass or copper, sell as scrap.
Process the gold plated scrap according to instructions found allover this board.
The silver plated stuff is a bit trickier, look in the silver section of this MB.
After removing the silver plate, the remander should be brass or copper, sell as scrap.
Well you can still refine it,for your nitric there's always make your own to reduce cost for your silver or if you intend to refine karat scrap you can use it for inquartation and melt your silver plated and use that for cementing the silver out of the nitrate solution so long as it's plated over copper or brass. The gold filled is fairly easy to refine and should provide a reasonable yield there are methods posted all over the forum for that. Your gold plated can either go into AP or through a sulphuric cell and then refine by using chlorox no nitric in that.Woolf said:
Take it slow and read all you can on here and I think you will find a way to process your scraps and keep harvesting until you really know which way to go.
Read C.M.Hoke until it makes sense and your familiar with the terminology used.
Buy lasersteves videos they give concise instructions on most of the processes I mentioned.
Good luck and dont give in you will learn what you need to know and have your own button to show us all.
hmmm i started reading hoke a while ago... just no time i guess... running business's constantly getting phone calls a questions i keep losing my place a rereading part after part haha DVDs have been great help but so far has only been refining gold and how to recover silver from gold... if you know a great dvd that can help me with silver and more examples on gold.. atleast i can pause and continue inbetween phone calls and such -.-
metatp
Well-known member
I refine silver. I think it is worth it. You just need patience to buy low enough and have the chemicals on hand to process them. I have more nitric acid than I can get silver to refine. For me, this is a good problem.Woolf said:
metatp
Well-known member
Check out LazerSteve's website. goldrecovery.usWoolf said:
I bought the silver DVD and I am very happy with it (though I still have not found the easter egg).
metatp
Well-known member
i like to stay small scale. I usually dissolve 200 to 400g at a time in glass jars or breakers. I usually run about 4 or so at one time. I usually combine them when I cement with copper. Most of the time I process the different sources of silver separately. I do 925 jewelry together. Other steriling from candlesticks and flatware separately, and I rarely mix contacts with the steriling. Some contacts have Tungsten or other metals that get trapped while cementing with copper. Those I either process twice or clean with HCL. Soon I will use a silver cell. I tried it a couple of times and now I am hooked.Woolf said:
A
Anonymous
Guest
I would not recommend using pennies,even the old ones were not pure copper.
goldenchild
Well-known member
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- Aug 14, 2009
- Messages
- 1,810
HTPatch said:
Was the easter egg ever revealed? I forgot all about that. I really want to know what the he!! it was.
I've decided to award all three pounds to the only person to solve the puzzle. I'll post the results in the appropriate thread later when I have more time to type it all up.
Steve
Steve
A
Anonymous
Guest
Well this is one contest I wish I had known about.... 
mic said:Well this is one contest I wish I had known about....
I posted it on the forum in it's own thread when I announced the debut of the Silver Refining DVD. Sorry you missed it, much to my surprise it has proved to be a very difficult Easter egg hunt.
Steve
A
Anonymous
Guest
That is the only video I did not buy....I guess that will teach me.
Well even though I (obviously) did not win,you have shown yet once again,how awesome you are by giving away something.I pray I will be at that point soon.Thank you steve for all you do for us(and harold,chris,lou....etc.)
Well even though I (obviously) did not win,you have shown yet once again,how awesome you are by giving away something.I pray I will be at that point soon.Thank you steve for all you do for us(and harold,chris,lou....etc.)
Woolf,
The copper will go into solution. You can get it back in the form of powder/sludge, but it's generally not economical on a small scale to get it back as a solid piece of metal. The melting process eats up a lot of fuel, flux, and crucibles. I learned that from Harolds posts.
Years ago I tried plating some powder and other tiny pieces in a sulphiric cell on to a copper sheet in an effort to get lots of tiny pieces into a sellable big sheet, but didn't have any luck. It's difficult to get a good contact to powder. It was much easier to have accidently made the powder in the first place.
FrugalEE
The copper will go into solution. You can get it back in the form of powder/sludge, but it's generally not economical on a small scale to get it back as a solid piece of metal. The melting process eats up a lot of fuel, flux, and crucibles. I learned that from Harolds posts.
Years ago I tried plating some powder and other tiny pieces in a sulphiric cell on to a copper sheet in an effort to get lots of tiny pieces into a sellable big sheet, but didn't have any luck. It's difficult to get a good contact to powder. It was much easier to have accidently made the powder in the first place.
FrugalEE
Find a copper bus bar, or large piece of fairly pure clean copper, you do not want small pieces of copper falling off and contaminating your silver if you cannot find a buss bar from old electrical panel, scrap yard or local electrician, you can use a piece of new copper pipe (not electrically refined like buss bar) will work cutting piece of pipe long wise and flatten out to a sheet of copper, the pipe will have a few more metal contaminate than buss bar but will do the job.
For those who nitric sources and prices is a concern.
Here is something I have been thinking about to save me some nitric acid:
After dissolving silver using diluted nitric acid with a small addition of peroxide (keeping NOx fumes gas low, regenerating the NOx into nitric in solution), (capturing as much NOx fumes generated bubbling into water from the reaction, this will recycle some and help to keep some NOx out of our air), this solution of dissolved silver nitrate will have a small amount of copper, and maybe other metals in solution (possible insoluble values), depending on source material.
Let this silver nitrate solution settle, and decanting any solids from this solution.
I believe if I did not use copper to replace silver at this point, but distilled off the NO2 gas into water with small portion of H2O2 in the receiver vessel, (using the metals already in solution to help distillation reaction, the copper here would help drive out the NO2 gases), making a fairly pure dilute nitric acid in the receiver, getting back a major part of my nitric acid, which can then be concentrated to dissolve more silver (up to 35% or 68% not higher than this, without adding H2SO4). there would be some loss of nitric, but I should get back major portion.
Now left in reaction vessel would be salts of silver crystallizing out, and copper (other base metals in solution, the copper in solution would help to push out the silver crystals, some of this I believe would need some experimentation to determine how concentrated to get this solution and at what point to stop the concentration point,
I think these silver crystals could be dried melted and run in a monitored silver cell (keeping copper in electrolyte within limits even if you have to remove a portion of electrolyte, and replace with concentrated silver nitrate) or better yet re-dissolved these silver and re-crystallized for higher purity, then run in cell.
Just something to think about, I will be doing some experiments later to see how well this Idea works.
For those who nitric sources and prices is a concern.
Here is something I have been thinking about to save me some nitric acid:
After dissolving silver using diluted nitric acid with a small addition of peroxide (keeping NOx fumes gas low, regenerating the NOx into nitric in solution), (capturing as much NOx fumes generated bubbling into water from the reaction, this will recycle some and help to keep some NOx out of our air), this solution of dissolved silver nitrate will have a small amount of copper, and maybe other metals in solution (possible insoluble values), depending on source material.
Let this silver nitrate solution settle, and decanting any solids from this solution.
I believe if I did not use copper to replace silver at this point, but distilled off the NO2 gas into water with small portion of H2O2 in the receiver vessel, (using the metals already in solution to help distillation reaction, the copper here would help drive out the NO2 gases), making a fairly pure dilute nitric acid in the receiver, getting back a major part of my nitric acid, which can then be concentrated to dissolve more silver (up to 35% or 68% not higher than this, without adding H2SO4). there would be some loss of nitric, but I should get back major portion.
Now left in reaction vessel would be salts of silver crystallizing out, and copper (other base metals in solution, the copper in solution would help to push out the silver crystals, some of this I believe would need some experimentation to determine how concentrated to get this solution and at what point to stop the concentration point,
I think these silver crystals could be dried melted and run in a monitored silver cell (keeping copper in electrolyte within limits even if you have to remove a portion of electrolyte, and replace with concentrated silver nitrate) or better yet re-dissolved these silver and re-crystallized for higher purity, then run in cell.
Just something to think about, I will be doing some experiments later to see how well this Idea works.
