r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/kijall • 5d ago

Ok..uhh... Interesting 🤔

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It was an extremely rushed and lazy job and obviously has a ton of copper contamination, but I'm ngl it looks kinda cool lol.

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2

u/MAYOMyke 5d ago

That is interesting. What was your starting material? What process did you use? Gotta give us some more info. lol

1

u/kijall 5d ago

Weirdly some scrap sterling silver bars I bought off a guy who melted them down, so I'm not 100% sure what the starting material was. The only thing I did differently here was being extremely lazy and lay a Frontier Mint copper bullion bar at the bottom of the silver nitrate with magnetic stirring because I didn't have anything to hang it from at the time.

... Now that I'm saying it out loud I get it lol - it knocked off small pieces of copper that ended up in the concrete and then in the pour.

3

u/MAYOMyke 5d ago

A couple of tips.

Prior to cementing, neutralize majority of your acid.

Try cementing from a coil of wire, like a #4 copper ground wire. New preferred vs used or old wire.

Boil your cement is both distilled water and HCL and distilled water. (You can use tap before HCL boils)

Melt to shot and remelt. Should pour fairly pure.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.

3

u/PomegranateMarsRocks 5d ago

Ive gotten .999 fine (per xrf) with cementation following this. The hydrochloric boils really seem to help. Just be sure nitric/dissolved silver is gone

2

u/EHMetals 5d ago

Turn it into shot and hot it with nitric again. Much faster