Thanks for doing this Jason. I decided to keep my pyramid, for now, vs melting it down. What was in this . . . copper slimes from reverse electroplating silver, as well as the silver. Sweeps from a silversmithing class, including filings, snips, and balls. Also . . . a lot of solder chips that are always getting swept up. Plus some contaminated water cast silver with I believe nickle. I removed as much of the magnetic material as possible. Which was from files, broken saw blades, and steel wool.
You mention slimes from electroplating silver. I always use electrorefining to purify my silver, and often times end up with a bit of PT group metals in the slimes. Have you had the pyramids tested with an XRF to see if there are any other PMs other than just silver? I’d be curious to see how pure this method actually gets silver.
@@uspockdad6429 Not electrorefining, though I do want to get a set-up to do that, I love the look of silver crystals. This is just putting silver plated items in a salt bath and hooking them up to a battery charger. It gets messy real fast. Those green clumps in the video are the copper + other base metals slimes, or salts.
Sounds good. Thanks for scrapping. I do it all the time, but am just getting into this part. I have a suggestion as to how to clean the slag off. I don’t know if you would loose content. Maybe us a 6 or 8 inch buffing wheel with rouges. Be careful with them.
I gotta say that, that was really cool. I've seen several vids on this before but the silver sprouts was something I've never seen! Have a GREAT Day!!!
Thank you for the video. It always amazes me what people came up with to do in the field, to make up for a lack of electricity and controlled temperature processing.
I am not saying this disrespectfully. I am saying it to share info. When you slowly cool a metal or glass down, it is called annealing. My whole family is into mechanics, machining, tool making, and production.
Amazing video and we are still using chemistry to remove the Ag from the mix, just not HNO3. I love the videos and while I presume I will never use this you have started me on my usual quest for knowledge. I found that Cupellation actually uses this chemical reaction to work Ag(s) + 2Pb(s) + O2(g) → 2PbO(absorbed) + Ag(l) and the first Cupel were made out of bone ashes while the best material was obtained from burned antlers of deer although fish spines could work as well. Amazing to me! Thank you very much!
Does it leave any trace lead..in other words could this process be used to purify sterling into 99.9 or better for use make something ingested such as coloidal silver?
Silver dissolves less oxygen as you raise the temperature beyond the melting point, so if you want to avoid "sprouting" when it cools, just bump up the temperature at the very end before you terminate the process. Of course, cooling it down slowly also helps, as you did with the second button.
@@stephenanderle5422 It's a well studied phenomenon. The solubility of oxygen increases with temperature in solid silver, peaks at just above the melting point, and then decreases with increasing temperature beyond that. At 973°C, the solubility of oxygen is 3050 PPM, at 1024°C it has gone down to 2950 ppm. As the temperature is increased the molecules gain in average energy and so are more able to overcome the attractive potential that keeps them in solution and thus the vapour pressure of the solvent increases and the solubility of the gas decreases. Ideally, of course, you would like to have an oxygen-free environment for a little while at the end of the process, to draw the oxygen out of the silver before it solidifies.
I like those silver sprouts. I've refined silver and poured small bars but have never seen any sprouts. But when my silver is pure I do see concentric cooling lines that show up on the exposed smooth, shiny surface of the bar as it cools after pouring. I use a torch and borax for melting. Thanks for the many informative videos.
I had it shot with an XRF. It is almost entirely pure silver, with contaminants of mostly lead, with copper, other metals, all less than 1% total. I was hoping it would show traces of gold, as some people work with gold. but no gold popped up.
I always thought that the sprouts were from the silver cooling faster on the outside and shrinking while the inside was still a bit molten. Squeezing the silver out as it cools into the sprouts. I know that bismuth does this as well. Copper will shrink inward, I'm guessing because it's such a good heat conducter, and form pits while silver and bismuth form these sprouts. But I never knew that it was due to dissolved oxygen and not from the outside cooking faster than the inside. Very cool! 😎
@10:35 the large button on left still have some impurities (most probably Cu, adding more lead and re-cupelling should remove it completely ) the other button is pure you can tell by the silver sprouts
Hello Jason I would really appreciate if you could tell me how to decide the percentage of each material to use for the flux versus the quantity of material to smelt thank you so much in advance for your response and I love what you do
Would this work with silver / copper coins? We lost our house in a wildfire in CA in 2017. My son and I had a coin collection that partially melted. A lot of the coins were 90% silver and others were 40% silver. I have freezer bags full of these melted masses of coins that I recovered from the ashes after the fire.
The way you recover silver is impressive! Great and detailed video! I know of a more efficient device that can improve the silver separation process and enhance performance. I’d love to exchange ideas and learn more from others in the community!
I was told to add potassium nitrate to purify the silver further with the same fluxes from a older gentlemen who used to do refining, I may be wrong but it seemed to work last I tried but I was working mainly with sterling and coin silver.
Jewelers rarely work with pure silver, but most commonly sterling (.925), sometimes others (.900 and .800) One of the metals used to alloy pure silver into sterling is copper. Thanks for another great video.
Much of what is in what I sent him is sterling, with silver solder chips, and some copper and brass, as we work with all. But I also had the slimes and silver plate from reverse electroplating silverware. There certainly is some pure silver in the mix. As most bezels are pure silver, and some jewelry is made with pure silver. We tend to not work in less than sterling.
As an owner of many small Gold mines in Colorado, i have struggled with, along with many small miners friends as well. were all chasing the Gold in our pans or on our shaker tables, but were all loosing the silver. how do we capture the silver??
Looks easy. I haveing lots of silverpeaces can i refinde it to Sterling. Just melting down ? 1 kilo of mix silver stuff from plated silver to Sterling.
Very interesting! Thank you for creating and posting! I believe you have an xrf, if not mistaken. It might have been cool to read the silver sample at the end to see if it confirms the purity of the silver! (for those of us new to this) I haven't read up on cupelling. Does the lead go airborne, or is it all absorbed into the cup? Also, concerning your cat refining for PGMs, is the xrf any help in reading crushed honeycomb, or is the concentration to small? Did you ever use a LIBS handheld? Are they better for your needs? Thank you!
If you already know the acid process, stick with it, as your recovery rates are astonishingly higher and your waste is much less. This process is meant to be used to understand if there's anything good in a _sample_ from a potential mine, but is not used to extract metal commerically, as it misses a lot and most importantly you need to add all that lead (and deal with cupels soaked with lead oxide afterwards, not counting however much you breathed in).
When I first got into collecting and melting sterling silver, I used to occasionally confuse it with pewter, so I have a number of ingots tainted with pewter. I thought about sending them off to a refinery, but I’m not really sure of the purity, so I’m wondering if there might be a way for me to refine it to a higher purity at home. I don’t have a furnace, so I’m restricted to a crucible and a torch.
i sent some silver to the refiner. they test with a machine and pay based on the precious metal percentages only. even some gold that came out 7ct was worth a fair bit.
This may be a really dumb question, but can you coupel or smelt the solder out of "C-grade" jewelry scrap (silver powder and solder dust from a jeweler's bench)?
Have you ever tried to seperate sliver from carbon? I would love to see a video about this, it doesn't seem to be a common process I've found in my research.
There's a video on UA-cam about some youngster who separates silver from graphite pencils. 🤔 You might want to check that out that's pretty close to carbon
I have some scrap silver filled epoxy. It is about 75% silver, and was curious if just melting it with some borax would yield pure silver as there is no other metals in it.
Standard electric furnace. They run about $800 the last time I looked. You can buy the heay Ting wire and build one with fire bricks. Keep an eye out at estate sales for furnaces. They're a good deal, usually sell for about 1/4 to 1/3 retail, so still hundreds of dollars.
@@michaeldenison7339 That is a very nice pyramid button and you could probably sell it online for nice change if you ever decided to. Kudos for the vid! -- brings back old memories.
Measure their density and compare to the density of pure aluminum or the various alloys for brass/bronze whatever, not the diffraction and you can figure out what % purity it is
Thanks for doing this Jason. I decided to keep my pyramid, for now, vs melting it down.
What was in this . . . copper slimes from reverse electroplating silver, as well as the silver. Sweeps from a silversmithing class, including filings, snips, and balls. Also . . . a lot of solder chips that are always getting swept up. Plus some contaminated water cast silver with I believe nickle.
I removed as much of the magnetic material as possible. Which was from files, broken saw blades, and steel wool.
You mention slimes from electroplating silver. I always use electrorefining to purify my silver, and often times end up with a bit of PT group metals in the slimes.
Have you had the pyramids tested with an XRF to see if there are any other PMs other than just silver? I’d be curious to see how pure this method actually gets silver.
@@uspockdad6429 Not electrorefining, though I do want to get a set-up to do that, I love the look of silver crystals.
This is just putting silver plated items in a salt bath and hooking them up to a battery charger. It gets messy real fast. Those green clumps in the video are the copper + other base metals slimes, or salts.
Sounds good. Thanks for scrapping. I do it all the time, but am just getting into this part. I have a suggestion as to how to clean the slag off. I don’t know if you would loose content. Maybe us a 6 or 8 inch buffing wheel with rouges. Be careful with them.
@@uspockdad6429yea. Thanks for sharing info, and real good question.
This is a very clear video with temperatures, equipment, and process. Good stuff.
I’m just now getting into collecting silver and gold , but this right here is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen !!! I’m gonna try it one of these days
I gotta say that, that was really cool.
I've seen several vids on this before but the silver sprouts was something I've never seen!
Have a GREAT Day!!!
Your videos are always so interesting, you pretty much never see this stuff from industrial let ALONE hearing a competent explanation of the process
Thank you for putting out a good stream of videos. They are packed full of information that will save me from making some mistakes in my new hobby.
Great video. Thanks for showing the temperature and a nice explination of how this smelting operation workd.
Thank you for the video. It always amazes me what people came up with to do in the field, to make up for a lack of electricity and controlled temperature processing.
I am not saying this disrespectfully. I am saying it to share info. When you slowly cool a metal or glass down, it is called annealing. My whole family is into mechanics, machining, tool making, and production.
Thanks ive actually wondered what they mean when they said that I thought it was just the heating part lol
That's only half of the process. 👍
That's only half of the process.
you actually anneal metals like copper and silver by heating it, and cooling it quickly in water.
The molten flux as it cools is a thing of beauty 👍
It looks like the sun. The mechanics are the same, too.
@@j_freeman3230 those convection currents!
@@scrotex6592 very beautiful, from a safe distance(:
What is the difference between the gas and the electric furnace
@@aliwitwit2217 you can be more precise with the temperature with the electric
I'm not in the metal refining business but this is a lot of fun to watch
Amazing video and we are still using chemistry to remove the Ag from the mix, just not HNO3. I love the videos and while I presume I will never use this you have started me on my usual quest for knowledge. I found that Cupellation actually uses this chemical reaction to work Ag(s) + 2Pb(s) + O2(g) → 2PbO(absorbed) + Ag(l) and the first Cupel were made out of bone ashes while the best material was obtained from burned antlers of deer although fish spines could work as well. Amazing to me! Thank you very much!
I was told the best Cupel materials were made from human bone.
It’s so nice to watch it cool down in the triangle
7:34 that should be the thumbnail, looks so mesmerizing.
You use no acids, but what do you do with all the lead waste that is in the cupels & the slag?.
بيتم تبخير الرصاص بي النار
@@gomanatala8558 الانجليزيه ليست جيدة
هو يُنقي الفضة الاسترليني إلى فضة صافية بأستخدام ماذا
اتمنى المساعدة
Nice one.
Ho to refine gold from ore with out using acid, can you make a video about that?
Thanks
I have an affinity for melted metal. Good job.
114g is about $147 of silver here in New zealand. You can see how this would scale up with a larger quality and be more profitable
Does it leave any trace lead..in other words could this process be used to purify sterling into 99.9 or better for use make something ingested such as coloidal silver?
Seriously stay away with the colodial BS. Ingot is the best final product.
@@sparksmcgee6641There are lots of studies about the "bs". But even doctors are not informed so ..
Silver dissolves less oxygen as you raise the temperature beyond the melting point, so if you want to avoid "sprouting" when it cools, just bump up the temperature at the very end before you terminate the process. Of course, cooling it down slowly also helps, as you did with the second button.
I think you are wrong. The hotter it gets the more oxygen it absorbs.
@@stephenanderle5422 It's a well studied phenomenon. The solubility of oxygen increases with temperature in solid silver, peaks at just above the melting point, and then decreases with increasing temperature beyond that. At 973°C, the solubility of oxygen is 3050 PPM, at 1024°C it has gone down to 2950 ppm. As the temperature is increased the molecules gain in average energy and so are more able to overcome the attractive potential that keeps them in solution and thus the vapour pressure of the solvent increases and the solubility of the gas decreases.
Ideally, of course, you would like to have an oxygen-free environment for a little while at the end of the process, to draw the oxygen out of the silver before it solidifies.
That's about 95 bucks of Silver!! Not bad especially considering silver is way undervalued!! Cool video!!
I like those silver sprouts. I've refined silver and poured small bars but have never seen any sprouts. But when my silver is pure I do see concentric cooling lines that show up on the exposed smooth, shiny surface of the bar as it cools after pouring. I use a torch and borax for melting. Thanks for the many informative videos.
I'm a new subscriber. Really informative stuff here. So cool to be able to see the process and have an explanation at every step. 👍❤️🦄
i wish you would have run a tester on the product you had at the end to give us and idea ho much silver vs other metals were in the block
I had it shot with an XRF. It is almost entirely pure silver, with contaminants of mostly lead, with copper, other metals, all less than 1% total. I was hoping it would show traces of gold, as some people work with gold. but no gold popped up.
@@michaeldenison7339 Ive read two of your comments where you used XRF. What does that mean? Google was no help at all.
I love Americans he used the .................B.B.Q. Tongs or was it he salad tongs. Great video!.
I always thought that the sprouts were from the silver cooling faster on the outside and shrinking while the inside was still a bit molten. Squeezing the silver out as it cools into the sprouts. I know that bismuth does this as well. Copper will shrink inward, I'm guessing because it's such a good heat conducter, and form pits while silver and bismuth form these sprouts. But I never knew that it was due to dissolved oxygen and not from the outside cooking faster than the inside. Very cool! 😎
What purity of silver can you expect to get after cupelling until the cupel cannot hold anymore base metals?
Will this technique work for gold?
watched for the ideas, stayed for the bird chirps
Ok you said some of the metals were platinum and maybe gold. So the pyramid isn’t pure silver..it’s a weird alloy?
Thank you. I came here to understand how God refines His people as silver is refined. Very informative.
what a load of crap
@10:35 the large button on left still have some impurities (most probably Cu, adding more lead and re-cupelling should remove it completely ) the other button is pure you can tell by the silver sprouts
Thanks for the tip
Hello Jason I would really appreciate if you could tell me how to decide the percentage of each material to use for the flux versus the quantity of material to smelt thank you so much in advance for your response and I love what you do
I liked the sprouts. Good info to have though. One day I'll melt my black sands.
Great vid!
Cool video thanks!
@Rudy Zechariah h
Actually it was quite hot
I understand what your doing .doing the basics given a genral idea on what to expect
*Your videos are so addicting and relaxing mate. Thanks. :)*
Would this work with silver / copper coins? We lost our house in a wildfire in CA in 2017. My son and I had a coin collection that partially melted. A lot of the coins were 90% silver and others were 40% silver. I have freezer bags full of these melted masses of coins that I recovered from the ashes after the fire.
If you would be interested in selling your coins message me and I will willingly buy them
Streetips is a youtube guy to reach out to for that.
The way you recover silver is impressive! Great and detailed video! I know of a more efficient device that can improve the silver separation process and enhance performance. I’d love to exchange ideas and learn more from others in the community!
Just about 1800 degrees...
"Honey, where's your salad tongs?"
How do you know how much lead to silver ratio to use?
I was told to add potassium nitrate to purify the silver further with the same fluxes from a older gentlemen who used to do refining, I may be wrong but it seemed to work last I tried but I was working mainly with sterling and coin silver.
Me too, I actually still have this flux that has 20% potassium nitrate in it -- works great.
Hi Jason Thank You for you time and share, Gonzalo From Baja Mexico
Great video and amazing how good your hands look!
At about $90 worth of silver, what was your cost in crucibles, materials & gas to extract?
He did not answer did he? That is what I thought.
@@bernardmacarius2635 Well, I know he does stuff at a loss. His channel makes him money, which is why he does it. I was just wondering.
@@sirfishslayer5100 I appreciate him sharing for sure!
@@sirfishslayer5100 profit will come only on large scale
@@paschoaltavares5134 Exactly. I'm sure he does it more than once.
Jewelers rarely work with pure silver, but most commonly sterling (.925), sometimes others (.900 and .800) One of the metals used to alloy pure silver into sterling is copper.
Thanks for another great video.
Much of what is in what I sent him is sterling, with silver solder chips, and some copper and brass, as we work with all. But I also had the slimes and silver plate from reverse electroplating silverware.
There certainly is some pure silver in the mix. As most bezels are pure silver, and some jewelry is made with pure silver.
We tend to not work in less than sterling.
As an owner of many small Gold mines in Colorado, i have struggled with, along with many small miners friends as well. were all chasing the Gold in our pans or on our shaker tables, but were all loosing the silver. how do we capture the silver??
Im in CO also, silver is too light lol
They mine a lot of silver in Peru and Mexico, but also in Idaho. Try checking with miners in those areas for their processes.
Is there any particular brand or grade sodium metabisulfite that is needed to extract gold from acid?
So the lead separates the silver from other metals?
Looks easy. I haveing lots of silverpeaces can i refinde it to Sterling. Just melting down ?
1 kilo of mix silver stuff from plated silver to Sterling.
Can you reuse the melting cup or is it spent after one use
Thanks for your video. I have a question. What is percentage of this purification method if Ag? Is this purification for Juewlery aims?
nice thank you for sharing the adventure and information on this smelting
How long did this process take? Have you figured out a cost per hour?
Very interesting! Thank you for creating and posting! I believe you have an xrf, if not mistaken. It might have been cool to read the silver sample at the end to see if it confirms the purity of the silver! (for those of us new to this) I haven't read up on cupelling. Does the lead go airborne, or is it all absorbed into the cup? Also, concerning your cat refining for PGMs, is the xrf any help in reading crushed honeycomb, or is the concentration to small? Did you ever use a LIBS handheld? Are they better for your needs? Thank you!
greetings from Chile...great job....by the way ...do you ´ve some involving silver chloride treatment?
Search for the Karo syrup process.
I have a 10 oz bar mixed aluminum and some silver is there a easyer way to separate it
What if I have copper bits.. how can I remove impurities and non copper to make fine copper?
How many times can you use the cupelle ?
Only once. It then contains the impurities of your process so dispose of it properly.
Hi mate just wondering if you next time buy super wool and not Kaowool because better and safer love the silver
I loved watching this simple process, thanks
I don't understand why when you put this vids don't you tell the people how much that worth it!!!! Gosh!!!
Cost of cuppels (probably spelled wrong) and other stuff vs final cost of silver?
Would using a electric melting furnace work for refine sliver using led
I think that's a better way to get the silver but what does it cost to run that furnace ?
I've been playing with acid but I'd like to give this a try, have any idea on the purity?
If you already know the acid process, stick with it, as your recovery rates are astonishingly higher and your waste is much less. This process is meant to be used to understand if there's anything good in a _sample_ from a potential mine, but is not used to extract metal commerically, as it misses a lot and most importantly you need to add all that lead (and deal with cupels soaked with lead oxide afterwards, not counting however much you breathed in).
I would love to see you do a specific gravity test on that
Chemical reactions, cool.
When I first got into collecting and melting sterling silver, I used to occasionally confuse it with pewter, so I have a number of ingots tainted with pewter. I thought about sending them off to a refinery, but I’m not really sure of the purity, so I’m wondering if there might be a way for me to refine it to a higher purity at home. I don’t have a furnace, so I’m restricted to a crucible and a torch.
i sent some silver to the refiner. they test with a machine and pay based on the precious metal percentages only. even some gold that came out 7ct was worth a fair bit.
What would you say the purity of the silver was at the end? Would it be .999 or .925?
So for sterling silver it would be super easy just melt it and the copper separates from the silver at 2200 degrees?
What do you do with the slag? Is it reusible as flux or can it be refined further or make good landscaping rock.
Good video, but is the final result %100 pure silver?? Or are there other metals in it?
PS . I have silver in calcite, copper &quartz. Same equipment??
Would the flux recipe change because you're not having a deal with sulfates/sulfides?
Can you tell the purity of the silver of both buttons separately and also of the final pyramid, thanks
Dude you f----ing rock. Appreciate you so much...
How can you remove tungsten from the silver
If your a jeweler where do you buy gold etc
Have you thought about using a fresnel lens to melt your metal?
This may be a really dumb question, but can you coupel or smelt the solder out of "C-grade" jewelry scrap (silver powder and solder dust from a jeweler's bench)?
I have tones of silver ores.. need to know where to cash in
These are great videos, very informative.
Nice video.. i hope i learn...
What is the name of that appratus you use in melting silver?
What furnace and cupellation cups do you use?
Hello. Will this process work with a graphite crucible? If so, what the formula for material to lead? Thank you for your time.
about what exact percentage of purity is that final silver pyramid at the end? Like 99%? 99.95? 99.995? 99.999? Thanks
It came to 99.5%
Merry Christmas 🌲Nice video
Have you ever tried to seperate sliver from carbon? I would love to see a video about this, it doesn't seem to be a common process I've found in my research.
There's a video on UA-cam about some youngster who separates silver from graphite pencils. 🤔 You might want to check that out that's pretty close to carbon
Thank you Jason. How do you clean the final product to sell it to a jeweler? Tx
I have some scrap silver filled epoxy. It is about 75% silver, and was curious if just melting it with some borax would yield pure silver as there is no other metals in it.
I use torch (propane +air compressor)
how do you know when the lead is used up and only silver is left
Can u possibly do a video refining silver from lead free solder dross
Is that a special furnace? Info please. Thank you.
Standard electric furnace. They run about $800 the last time I looked. You can buy the heay
Ting wire and build one with fire bricks.
Keep an eye out at estate sales for furnaces. They're a good deal, usually sell for about 1/4 to 1/3 retail, so still hundreds of dollars.
Do you think it would be possible to use pewter scrap? Or would the tin pollute the final product?
What do you do with the end product (silver pyramid)?
silver is money.
Normally, you would sell it, or melt it down and add copper and pour it into a mold to make sterling. But I decided to keep it as is.
@@michaeldenison7339 That is a very nice pyramid button and you could probably sell it online for nice change if you ever decided to. Kudos for the vid! -- brings back old memories.
What happens if you add too much borax to a melt other than waste of material?
I make copper brass and aluminum ingots now I wonder if they are even close to pure. I use flux when melting but still it may not be very pure.
Measure their density and compare to the density of pure aluminum or the various alloys for brass/bronze whatever, not the diffraction and you can figure out what % purity it is
@@benadams5557 I inquired about melting down aluminum cans and was told they would pay much less for ingots than for the cans themselves.
I notice you've switched back to lead instead of bismuth in the cupelling process; any reason for the switch?
Bismuth is far much dangerous.