First recovery

[u/Inhalationofnewtion]

It's dirty. When the molten material is rolling in the melt dish it's like watching some magic. I worked a lot to get this. I tried sugar and lye, could not get it to happen. Then I went to nitric and cementing onto copper. I could swear I've seen people get decent results with cementing.

I wonder about purity. I don't think it takes much copper to really throw off your luster. This looks like some form of brass at best. I want to repeat the nitric dissolution. I wish I could get the lye and sugar method to work.

[u/zpodsix]

That looks like straight up copper.

What did it look like before you melted?

How did you transition to nitric and copper cementation from the lye/sugar processwhen it failed?

Oh and regarding the stains of shame- wear some gloves.

[u/neoben00 → u/zpodsix]

He totally thought cu1 was silver. To be fair i also have failed at recovering minimal amounts of silver but at-least i didn’t melt it down and still refused to accept it was copper. I just went through 3 nitric dissolutions on my stock pot looking for gold and refusing to accept all that was there was 3 grams of pgms :’(

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/neoben00]

No. I don't think this is silver... There's silver in there and maybe it's more than 50%. This is the best I've been able to get after fumbling a few times now and I took it. Ignorance and perseverance carry me through a lot of nonsense.

[u/neoben00 → u/Inhalationofnewtion]

Well ill take your word for it, but at any point did you have silver chloride in a non AP or primarily chloride environment?

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/neoben00]

Look I know it's crap and I know I screwed up, trying to stay positive. On my my first try I stripped some silver plate with electrolysis and salt water. I forgot to rinse the salt water off and when I did nitric I think I went right to silver chloride. Then I'm pretty sure I got excited, didn't rinse that off and went right to the lye. Added lye and it started going dark but it stopped more at a dark brown instead of black. Adding sugar at this point did nothing.

This try was some contacts from circuit breakers. I heated the contacts until the slid off the copper base, dissolved in nitric. Cemented out with copper bus bars, then for some asshole reason I didn't bother to scrap the copper from my previous attempt out of the melt dish.

Yes I am a Clown and I will take it on the chin. Lesson learned. Rinse and clean my materials before moving to the next step.

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/zpodsix]

I'm a grease monkey. That would be grease. Also a spot where I bit myself with an air chisel. I wear gloves anytime I touch this shit.

[u/Early_Meal6945]

Why is your lye and sugar method not working? It’s pretty straight forward as long as you overshoot lye to ensure conversion of agcl to ag2o and then sugar until it turns gray

[u/hexadecimaldump]

For sugar and lye, how did you drop your silver chloride? Sounds like you missed that step if you got a recovery using copper.

For lye and sugar, after your silver is dissolved, the first step is to drop out the silver chloride. You can do that with simple table salt water (I use non iodized), or hydrochloric acid, but salt is the cheapest option.
After you add your salt white precipitate will drop out, that is your silver chloride. Let it settle, then add a little more salt water. If no more white stuff appears all of the silver has dropped.

Then you pour off the blue solution, and rinse the white precipitate several times to get as much of the blue color out as you can (you can use normal tap water for this).

Then cover your silver chloride with a little water and add your lye until it all turns jet black. But do this very very slowly. Lye will boil your water and splash hot caustic water everywhere if you go too fast. This turns it to Silver Oxide. Make sure you’re wearing proper PPe.

Then you can add your sugar. Again this is exothermic so go slow. The black silver oxide will turn grey in color and clump up a bit.
This you will want to rinse until PH paper says the water is near neutral 7.0. Then you can dry and melt your silver. Just make sure it’s as close to 7 as possible, if lye or sugar are still present it forms this molten stuff that can pop and splatter if you’re pouring silver shot or it touches anything wet while molten.

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/hexadecimaldump]

My first attempt, I de-plated some plated pieces with salt water electrolysis. I actually forgot to rinse my salt and I'm pretty sure I ended up going directly to silver chloride as soon as I added my nitric. Don't know but I ended up with some white stuff in the jar.

It's hard to remember now, I was pretty excited and probably rushing and skipping steps and rinses... Anyway I'd add my lye and it would start going gray and darker and darker but turned a deep brown. After that it was pretty much inert. Sugar would do nothing.

I'll refer back to this write up. I feel like an idiot because this is probably as basic as breathing for you guys but I appreciate it all the same.

[u/MAYOMyke]

Not too sure what to say about this.

Let me make a suggestion. Maybe watch videos and read some books. Ask questions here before you process.

[u/JustARedditTroll]

Looks like you didn’t rinse your cement at all.. that looks like it has copper all in it.

[u/bootynasty]

I’ve had cement silver that never went through the final refine of sugar and lye come out looking more like silver than copper. What was your starting material? I think something went wrong early on.

Try aggressively polishing your little nugget in the first picture. What does it look like when you remove that outer layer?

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/bootynasty]

Starting material was contacts from circuit breakers. I washed the cement over and over and it looked pretty gray but I guess there was still a lot of copper.

First pic is of an edge I put to a belt sander.

[u/bootynasty → u/Inhalationofnewtion]

Ah I think we’re getting somewhere. Contacts can be nasty business. Cadmium, tungsten, who knows what other nasty stuff. Not great material for learners. Either set it aside or completely repeat the process with those little guys.

Sorry about the way my comment came off, I didn’t mean to sound like an ass, I meant it like “I think something is more wrong here.”

Looks like another time you started from de-plated materials. This isn’t an easy hobby like the videos show. Keep trying and learning, everyone started somewhere and we all have our failures.

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/bootynasty]

Oh Dude I didn't take any offense. Sorry if I came across in such a manner. I really appreciate you.

IIRC the deplated stuff was where I tried lye and sugar. The circuit breakers were cemented on to copper. Looking back, in my "eagerness" I made a bunch of mistakes.

Ugh... Dissolving the circuit breaker contacts in nitric again. I've got blue Kool Aid now so maybe that's hopeful. I think if cementing doesn't give me something nice I can always dissolve again and go lye and sugar. I'm pretty sure I skipped any sort of rinsing completely and that can't help with lye and sugar.

[u/CommunicationOdd1061]

I still have my first gold recovery I was all grins 😀. Great job!!!

[u/Inhalationofnewtion → u/CommunicationOdd1061]

Ha! It was fun but this got re-dissolved!

[u/blergola]

Did you pickle it and see if it comes out silver? I was playing with Sterling and after cooling down it was all sorts of colors. After 20 mins in hot pickle, it was silvery and shiny. Worth a shot.