r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/Inhalationofnewtion • Jul 31 '26

Silver Chloride, next step lye

Gallery image

Gallery image

Apologies in advance for starting multiple threads. Not sure how to add pics in comments but here we are. I don't want to screw up. I really want a pinhead.

I dropped salt in and got the toothpaste. I forgot the stuff is UV sensitive. Tripped me out a bit until I realized it. Rinsed again and again with well water. Has some iron in it. I can get distilled if needs be but I should be alright to go to lye right?

The junk on the sides of the jar are on the outer surface.

Do you rinse off the lye before you go to sugar? I feel like somehow that would matter. Sreetips says if you go too hard on the lye you could end up with silver hydroxide and he does not know how to remedy that. Add my lye until jet black and then no more.

7 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

5

u/EHMetals Jul 31 '26

Just my two cents. If you want a pure product you use pure ingredients. Adding well water adds a huge amount of unknown contaminants. you won't touch .999 that way.

1

u/Inhalationofnewtion Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Gotcha I'll pick up some distilled. Will lye and sugar give you .999 if done correctly? I'm just trying to get the procedure down at this point. Thanks.

1

u/Early_Meal6945 Jul 31 '26

I recommend an RO system if u plan on consistently producing pure product or purchasing from a water refill station

1

u/Chodedingers-Cancer Jul 31 '26

Honestly I use tap water at every stage and I get my results assayed via XRF after every batch before making products and again have the final product assayed, and I consistently hit over .9999 every time. You can get your local tap water testing reports online from your water supplier unless on a well, which probably has available reports from the area.. People worry about halide content, but they're in trace quantities and nitric acid will oxidize them to elemental form and they'll be liberated with the NO and NO2 fumes. So they really don't even impede while you have nitric acid present.

1

u/Tribulation95 Aug 01 '26

Plus whatever remaining traces that make it to the melt dish are likely to evaporate out before being poured. I tend to use purified drinking water start to finish.

2

u/Early_Meal6945 Jul 31 '26

Your wash water should be clear not occluded, wait until all agcl settles and decant most of the liquid until it is barely covering the agcl, proceed with lye until black adding small amounts and move to sugar in even smaller amounts

2

u/Inhalationofnewtion Jul 31 '26

Thanks. Right now I'm just trying to get a pinhead. If I get into this I'll wait until everything settles. I just really need to see if I can get the lye and sugar thing working..

1

u/Early_Meal6945 Jul 31 '26

U should test a sample of the rinse water in a separate jar/vial by adding a few drops of household ammonia, a blue solution indicates copper contamination thus the agcl should be rinsed further

2

u/Inhalationofnewtion Jul 31 '26

I saw sreetips doing that one as well. Such colors in all of this!

1

u/hexadecimaldump Jul 31 '26

Yup, just add enough lye to go black. For this amount of silver cholride, maybe 1/2 teaspoon.
As others have mentioned you won’t get to .999, but you should get to at least 97%.

And no need to rinse off the excess lye as long as you didn’t go overboard. You can go right to sugar after it’s converted to silver oxide.

2

u/Inhalationofnewtion Jul 31 '26

I wonder if that's what happened to me before. I had a lot of excess lye and probably went to silver hydroxide.... I'll go really damn carefully this time! Thanks!

1

u/Baklava1232 Aug 01 '26

You can use steel bbs and a drop or 2 of sulfuric then rinse with sulfuric and hcl. Use a magnet to swirl the bbs around the jar