There is a much cheaper way of doing silver plate. The formula is 19 parts sulfuric acid to one part nitric acid. Heat but only to about 140 F. The silver plate will turn white as it dissolves in the solution. When the white is gone, that piece is done. I use three buckets and a plastic colander. I let one batch drain while the next batch is working in the solution. After a batch is drained, I rinse in bucket number one, still in the colander, then bucket number two, then dumped in an empty bucket. Buckets one and two have two gallons of tap water in them. When the solution is spent, it will be very dark and will not take any more silver. I let the solution cool down to ambient temperature. I pour half the solution in each of the water buckets and add a saturated solution of un-iodized saltwater to turn the silver into silver chloride. Work it into silver metal as you wish. You might want to try it in one of your great videos. You do a great job. I enjoy them very much.
Hi frank zahn, my name is Joshua. I processed some e-waste a decent amount of it for gold and I have a lot of the waist but I know there must be silver in. Personally, I think there’s a lot of silver, but I can’t figure out why it won’t precipitate. I don’t know if I neutralized the solution or not so I’m going to try that one more time, but can you give me any advice? I really need help on this because I could use the silver right now. Do you have the time please answer me back. Thank you.
@@sreetips hello sir, my name is Joshua. I asked the same question to the gentleman above. You seem like someone who is busy so I didn’t think to even ask you first. I processed some e-waste a while back, and the waste made a very deep, dark green solution. I know there’s a lot of silver in it but I can’t figure out how to precipitate it out. I have added hydrochloric acid to it. I’ve put copper in the solution hoping to cement it out. Can you please help me?
The little symbol A is a good guide as to the quality of the silver plate. There are tons of different systems and no standard but a century or so ago, many British makers used followed the gradings ... A1 = Superior, A = Standard and then lower and lower grades below that B, C, D, E based on how many pennyweight was plated on. A1 was usually a troy ounce of silver per 12 tablespoons or forks. Also don't get confused with stamped in Old English font which looks like a hallmark. That's electroplated nickel silver and usually pretty thin.
My local thrift stores all have piles of old silverplate-no one wants it anymore, and no one wants to polish it,either. I'm always on the hunt for Sterling, and I've found that Sterling items are ALWAYS marked "Sterling" -especially things made in the US. If you are serious about finding Sterling "in the wild", you have to know foreign hallmarks also-they won't say "Sterling" on them, but maybe just a stamped ".925" or something similar. British hallmarks are more involved, but you are always looking for the lion with the raised paw. At every thrift store, I always go through all the silverplate and old silverware-I've found an amazing amount of overlooked Sterling. My most common find are "weighted Sterling" candleholders-I've found dozens of them in the past two years. They are all just a thin skin of silver around a heavy cement or plaster base, but it all adds up.
Your videos have gotten much better over the last several years........ This one is new to me, but important for me to learn how much effort I should put into plated vs. sterling pieces.... Thanks
Mr Sreetips there is a very easy way to de-plate silver. A tub of salt water with a piece of stainless steel for the negative contact and hook the positive contact to the piece of plated silver. Run a current through it for 10-15 min and the silver will flake off
@@lifeindetale I suppose dissolve in nitric and precipitate as AgCl or cement out with copper. In my experience the silver only plates off if you are lucky. It cements back onto the brass, and base metal oxides form at the anode and create a nasty foam. They can be converted to soluble salts by adding HCl, but then chlorine gas evolves at the cathode.
If you undershoot a little bit with the HCl, so you leave just a little silver nitrate in solution. You can filter out your silver chloride, and save the filtrate. You can then use the filtrate to dissolve more silver items, because when you add the HCl you also create nitric acid. You just want to undershoot with the HCl, because if some is left over it will react with the silver and form a AgCl coating keeping the nitric from dissolving it. That way you can save some money on buying more nitric. I actually just did this, it worked out pretty well.
Why? The junk silver is worth more than the silver you claim is pure. How can you prove that purity? I know the silver dime is 90% silver and I have a good idea of its weight and value.
@@allenjester3228 not when you call it just. Its worth less. Our testing things as humans have evolved over time. It was once used as currency. You don't think our means of testing is accurate? Do your thing . Do what makes you happy. Life is short.
We’re headed for an economic catastrophe. I’d rather have the constitutional / junk silver than take someone’s word for the value of an item that I don’t recognize. Junk silver has recognizable value. Practice with silver plate or obscure foreign coins and save the junk for us stackers.
some companies call it Ultraplate, some call it Extraplate. I only found about it awhile back because my grandma had a bunch of it, than I started looking into it. It is very common, mostly older pieces but some newer ones can be found. Yes you can find several pieces with with very thin plating but thick plating isn't rare
@@sreetips not sure if you will get to see my question to you but thought i would try to catch you here. I have some silver electronic wire pieces that dont dissolve in a hour of the acid. Will not turn blue niether in the dissolve state. Only in the copper bath does it turn blue. Any thoughts?
Just as plating I would never have imagined you could get that much silver off of that lid. Understand I dont doubt you a bit as I have learned how sharp you really are at this stuff. Im also extremely jealous at how productive you are and could only hope that I could ever do anything like what you do. I dont like toxic chemicals or agents. I would never work in a trade or plant that would put me anywhere near dangerous lab work. I worked in a production machineshop for just under 28yrs but I would bolt when they had painters painting the floor with very toxic paint. Whenever they painted in that building I bolted to get away. One of the painters never wore a mask I couldnt believe it. You would get a headache right away if you were anywhere near it. Im not exagerating. But you I have learned know exactly what you are doing. Do you have a chemistry degree because you work like a Scientist, I do really enjoy watching what you do and most of all when you end up with an incredible bar of Gold and Silver too. I always wonder if you really should be wearing a good mask or ventilator but I think you know what your doing.
He uses respirators and fume hoods when needed. Chemicals are perfectly safe when handed with safety and respect. No need to " bolt away " just be smart and safe. You sound kind of childish actually
Problem with nitric its so damn expensive, atleast in 2023... Im not sure about US prices but in the UK its £106 for 5 litres of nitric, if you need to use 800ml to extract 10g of silver then its costing you money. I was thinking about refining karat gold scrap but the cost of the nitric just eats away all the profit plus some more :(
I buy six 2.5 liter bottles for two fifty. Was three hundred with the fifty dollar shipping charge. But last time I ordered, it was still two fifty, but the shipping charge went up to one fifty!
@@sreetips I can see why you only really do karat scrap, anything else is a complete waste of nitric and it appears that refining gold consumes far less nitric than silver.
Thank you for taking the time and using your chemicals and shop to show us how to do what you do & now we know to just turn it into a recycling center as the base metal under the silver. ❤❤
Hey sreetips ! Thank you for all the great content you keep on making ! I have 10kg of silver plated items , it wont make sense to dissolve them in nitric as i will need alot of nitric to do that . I was wondering if sanding the silver off and refining the dust would be a better option ?
I have wondered how using a very course ceramic grit in a vibrating or even in a rotating polishing setup would work. I initially had the idea to strip gold off of pins and fingers etc. as a way to speed up the process by not having to devolve all of the copper
I finally got the store and I have huge silverware & scrap I gotta go through. It's time for me to learn it now. I told you I'd get that pawn shop in negotiations & now I own it😊
Wondering about sandblasting the silver plate off of the items, then separating the sand and metals with simple tap water and a gold pan. Would allow you to drastically reduce the amount of nitric acid required to pull this off. Could maybe boost the financial feasibility of this specific operation.
I use reverse electroplating to remove silver plate it's actually rather simple to use and drastically reduces the amount of copper contamination to be removed later with the acids (also saves time because the removed silver plate falls off in small thin pieces and copper contaminant is a fine powder that desolves quickly). I use salt water as electrolyte and a car battery charger as a power source...
@Jacob Shrewsbury make sure to check your electroplated solution for silver after u get the silver flakes out, is usually leftover silver suspended in solution u can't see.
Best to melt into a sheet and electroplate the copper out with copper sulfate and sulfuric acid in a cell will get pure copper and anode slimes being able to reuse the acid many times lowering the acid cost
@@sreetips Great video Sreetips. Glad you are back. :-) Nurd Rage has a video converting copper chloride, from PCB etchant, to copper sulfate then plates out copper to recycle... essentially I would think it's pretty close to the same thing your doing converting the copper & silver nitrate to copper and silver chloride with HCL ... anyway check out the link. ua-cam.com/video/FjEoRidvgYE/v-deo.html
Look up "growing copper crystals". Electroplating with CuSO4 is actually the industrial process for refining copper. You just need a DC powersupply, a bucket and some CuSO4. Silver won't dissolve in sulfuric acid, but copper will. You're transfering copper from the anode to the kathode, pure silver will collect under the anode, as the copper gets dissolved. Also as you use dichromate for your testingsolution, I've no doubt that you can get CuSO4
We are now in 2023 : and It looks like that value is going up. There are three tangible items that will be worth so much after the dollar collapse. Everything else will be digital currency if we get lucky. Thank you for your demonstration it works for me.
I contacted you on eBay. I have a bulk lot of Silverplate. I can sell the items by the piece, but shipping adds too much cost. Their size and shape make it hard to stuff a priority mail flat rate box full of it. I can deliver if you want it.
Reed and Barton was (is?) a maker of high quality sterling and silver plate items. They would heavily plate their items-I see some things marked "Quadruple plated" also.
HI! I have a problem about silver recovery from silverplated silverware. The basic metal is zinc, then a thin layer of copper and then silverplating on. First i try to disolve whole spoon in nitric acid, but it starts to boil over the floor. I repead the proces with less concetrated nitric acid, the spoon is disolved, but i have a lot of powder on bottom, the liquid is blueish. So im guesing that zinc is on the bottom like powder, silver is in liquid? or did zinc something else to my silver? Now I will first melt the zinc away and scrap the upper layer down, and i will procced with that nugget forward
Zinc is soluble in nitric acid it will turn your solution green. Get a small sample of the blue liquid and test it with a few drops of hydrochloric acid like I did in the video. What ever is on the bottom, it shouldn't be zinc. It might be your silver.
@@sreetips Hi again. I finished disolving silverplated silverware in nitric acid, filtered it and put Hcl and nothing happened. Like no silver inside. No cloudiness... ;( Should I try put copper inside to cement silver? But now I have second problem with recovering gold from cpu...I disolved 15cpu and few ram sticks in Hcl + hidrogen perokside (little), put those goldplating leaves in aqua regia, they disolved, filtered the liquid and today I got my smb by mail, (in Slovenia hard to buy), and surprise...nothing happened with liquid..like no mud at the bottom, still green yelowish colour...I put it so much that smb sit on the bottom...no reaction. Do you know what could go wrong? Should I put a little bit of urea inside?
Several other items missing from the cost analysis. Not a very cost effective way to obtain silver, but the chemistry was interesting. I am glad YOU did it.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, i'm working in a mining lab so we assay gold and silver from ore and pb concetrates. I dissolve the dore button with nitric acid with the purpose to dissolve silver and get a gold button and calculate its content in the samples. I generate a lot of silver nitrate solution every day and I precipitate it with HCl. I will suggest a method based on yours to take benefit of this waste and recover some silver. Greetings from Mexico.
I'd say it is a profitable venture seeing where the bidding is, at current time. Quite Profitable if I do say so myself. Great video. Once again you don't disappoint.
Welcome back. You've bee missed, @Sreetips. I like the addition of the cost vs return calculation in the vids. It's interesting to see the return on investment.
Hello and welcome back :) I'd wish you a happy New Year, but I think it would be nicer to wish you a BETTER year than last year :) And don't think what happened with your stockpot was a disaster...it'll be really exciting and interesting to see how you manage to get all the platinum back. Personally I can't wait to see how you're going to do it :) I'm sure a lot of viewers will agree with me. Thanks for another entertaining video
If you knew the base metal was copper you could etch it out with cupric chloride or ferric chloride which is a lot cheaper than nitric. Ferric would also dissolve brass base metals. Or would that not work due to contaminants or unwanted metals like iron, tin, zinc? Probably have to cut it into smaller pieces to expose more base metal because those solutions are not as aggressive as nitric.
@@sreetips My electronics hobby, we use cupric chloride and /or ferric chloride to etch copper off printed circuit boards, ferric will also etch brass. I was just thinking those might works for dissolving out copper and brass plus they are a lot cheaper than Nitric.
Of course ferric chloride works work, but it would take quite some time. The benefit is the obvious fact that no workup is required after the dissolution step; just rince the silver and you're good to go!
@@glennbartusch7310 With all the stuff Sreetips has laying around and tied up in waste solutions, I don't think that letting it sit around for the time it would take to dissolve the copper would bother him much. However the process might not work on high percentage alloys for the same reason that you have to inquart some gold alloys.
the best way to test silver is with 18k test acid. and a super tiny drill bit you can find them in beuty stores they use then for finger nails. you just find a spot drill in past the plated test with the acid if it turns green its plated. then after that spot can be fixed buy a buffing pad if the person wants to repair the peace.
First time watching! Stumbled upon video while researching Büchner funnel uses. I have a bunch of those Büchner funnels. Are they worth waiting to sell to people on eBay?
"Thick" silver plate is often silver "clad" rather than plate. This is done when the flat sheet of metal is made, already clad in the silver then it stamped out and presses into shape.
I tried using a Sliver Cell setup to strip Silver plate from objects like that. I used Potassium Nitrate as the electrolyte. It seems to work. Pretty quickly too.
i send you the formula and the steps to operate the bath if you like... so you can tray it in small scale to anderstand the process its very economical and kwicly done.
Experiment was not for the production of... Or the extraction of silver. This was just a good experiment. Had this been an ACTUAL ATTEMPT at recovering sliver... A lot more. A LOT MORE plated or any particular products you want to place in the beaker. In order to recover higher amounts of silver concentrate. Would have been added !
I have a question? When you melted your silver cement in the wet filter. Did you use any flux like Borax? I know you glazed you dish before melting? Did you add borax to that silver burn? Streetips your my favorite you tube channel. I have learned so much. Never stop doing your vids. Thxs so much
Having your wife showing some of her shopping trips with hints would be great. The secret to making this a profitable hobby is a good, steady source of reasonably priced raw materials.
Chuck, I don't know because I don't have any experience with stripping the silver off. With silver at $16 my guess is probably not. Especially when there is so much silver scrap jewelry out there. Stripping off a few grams doesn't make much sense when you can buy scrap sterling silver for pennies, if you know where to look.
Awesome, I’m clumsy so I wouldn’t try my ideas myself. I have a box of gold and silver plated jewelry and some 40%coins I’d like to eventually get the gold silver and copper from. are their trustworthy refiners I could send to that don’t charge an arm and two legs for it. But seriously I pretty much can do it but I’d need instruction step by step on paper just so I don’t miss any steps
I've watched this video a few times I'm getting ready to do a big lot my question is would it save on acid perhaps not time but if you de electro plate your items the powder or mud that comes out isn't pure silver would this method right hear work 1/. 2 would it save my acid any 3 would you be willing to do a video on it keep in mind I have like 20 pounds of silver plate no way I can make that profitable unless I have a renewable reducer just curious on your take
How are you doing all the report??? When I pour raw silver, there is no shine, all the tin. I ask you to explain to me, and I wish you all the success in all your work. 🙏✍️
Question??? Why didn't you just use plain non iodine salt in place of the hydrochloric acid to drop the silver out of solution? Is the result different? All your vids get my mind working in over drive .. thank you so much for the education.
Hi Sreetips, I am a new watcher and you have me hooked. QUESTION: what is the orange gas and would it make the reaction and therefore nitric acid use more efficient if a condenser was used to drop it back into the beaker?
Thanks for the breakdown at the end. What about the sodium hydroxide $ what is your time worth and what is the Map gas for melting it down cost $$ all is overhead. so to me, it looks like you might break even at best. Is it any cheaper to just smelt it down from the start ?
Ya I got that, I just been looking at doing this sort of thing but don't want to do it and not at least come out a bit ahead. Thanks for the reply.@@sreetips
I see. The only reason I did this was because I seen how thick the silver coating was over the base metal. Most silver plated stuff is not that thick. This item was unusually thick, and that’s why I choose to do it.
I collect scrap Sterling and a bit of Silverplate, there are definitely different thicknesses of plated silver items, some even say triple plate on them not that that means much. On the profit side of things, I find that collecting and reselling sterling silver rings and things or even plated items as the item itself has a higher profit than smelting or chemical refining. So then I buy a high-quality 999. Silver rounds or bullion, it is a better bet. Well as long as you are having Fun that's what it is about.@@sreetips
Thanks for your great Video, very instructional as always ! One question, It´s possible to "UnPlate" the item, that is, using the appropriate electrolyte can electrically remove the thin layer of silver ? Maybe this way is economically feasible.
I wanted to watch this, to see silver recovery I have thousands and thousands of silver contacts. I want to someday process. It looks like it should be one of the easier pm to process, but I'm going to study and study until I'm very confident I can do it. Probably years in the future. Thanks for the GREAT VIDEO!!!
Hello, the greatest chemist in the world, thank you for spreading your experience to the viewers. I have an urgent question. I am working on extracting gold from rocks and stones crushed with aqua regia, and I work on large quantities. I have a problem, which is how do I know that the solution is saturated and will not be able to dissolve more gold and I have to replace it? Thank you
Great video. Would this process be the same if I wanted to recover silver from the waste that I got from my initial gold recovery? To be more precise I recovered gold from CPUs but I know there's silver in the waste. Do I recover this silver like you've done in this video so basically adding distilled water and nitric acid to the waste solution and continuing like u did or is there another way? Would highly appreciate your reply. Thank you so much.
Or do I add copper to the waste solution to cement the silver out. I'm a little confused as to what the next step will be to recover the silver. Help pls. 😬
If you have silver in solution then you can add copper to "cement" the silver out. However, if your solution contains any hydrochloric acid then this won't work. Hydrochloric acid added to a silver nitrate solution will immediately precipitate silver chloride. The silver chloride can be recovered and converted to pure silver metal with lye and sugar. You can test your unknown solution by putting some in a test tube then add HCl. If silver is present then you'll immediately see a cloud is silver chloride form.
That was pretty interesting street. I recycle off and on and I have about 5 lb of silver plated copper wire. I would like to melt it down and retrieve the silver and copper to recycle the copper as copper 2 and take the silver to a jewelry store and get paid for the silver. Anyway of just melting it down on the store or with a propane torch? I'm not much into using chemicals.
What about extracting the gold from mineralized outcrops? Like say malichite and chrysicola to get the copper out, or silver from pyrargynite? Is there a way to get the gold out of the pyrite. I have a indigo blue metal with gold veins and pyrite in it that sets my metal detector off that has copper and iron keyed out so it dont read them. I want the gold out.
37:32 I assume this is Copper chloride solution with some trace silver chloride some trace copper nitrate and unconverted silver nitrate in that white bucket. Can this be mixed in with your silver waste bucket with the pour offs from regular silver cementation?
like your video. think I would take an angle grinder to that plate inside your containment box and remove all the silver that way then sweep it all into beaker that would eliminate having to dissolve everything and yield per acid used would be much higher
Nice video and great way to get pure silver but I have about 100 pieces of silver plated flatware and 20 or so silver plated platters and I am looking for an easier and more economical way to get the silver out of all that. I am pretty sure most of it has a thinner plating than your platter did so I believe nitric acid will just cost too much. Have any ideas that will not require days of labor or cost more than the silver is worth? Have a wonderful day.
Scott, this is my first try with silver plated scrap. Maybe when silver gets to $100 per ounce then it will become viable to use nitric to get it off of silver plated items. For now, I don't know any other ways of getting the silver - yet.
I've seen 2 or 3 people on UA-cam do it with electrolysis and it looks pretty easy. Here's a video from Moose Scrapper: ua-cam.com/video/H_LbT3mhilI/v-deo.html
Is there any way to strip the silver off without completely dissolving the base metals as well, or will the silver continue to cement out onto the base metal requiring that is be completely dissolved? I have a very large amount of silver plated items that I was hoping to strip, and am trying to figure out exactly how much nitric acid and total volume of liquids will be required throughout the process.
I really enjoyed this video and learning more about silver plate. I was surprised by the amount at the end. I also really liked going through the costs and seeing that it is not worth it to separate it. I wonder also though about how much the copper is worth that was in it. 😀😀
Got a question Mate - I tried following you, but to less sodium hydroxide in and than already put th3 sugar, than noticed that Nothing comes out, so I add more naoh after the sugar was added, than it reacted and got hot, but no silver participated out, so what doing now? Cheers and thanks for.sharing
Would larger quantities lower the cost to recovery ratio? I know it would increase the time and the materials cost, but trying to decide if refining the silver plate is worth it to have the silver to stockpile. I guess the same question for gold applies.
The only reason I did this is because this piece had a thick coating of silver over the brass. I filed deep into the metal. Then looked under magnification. I could see the thick coating of silver. Most silver doesn’t have a thick coating like that. Even with this thick coating, it still cost more in nitric acid than its worth. There are more economical methods to get the silver plate off of the plated stuff. But the amount of silver will be small.
@@sreetips understand it won't be a great deal. I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth the effort to slowly add to a stack of silver. If I can go to an estate sale or a thrift store and pick up a box of silver plated items for 5 to 10 bucks and maybe get an equivalent amount of money out of it in silver, regardless of the materials cost, it would be technically adding to my stock. I saw an ad for a company that offers to do the reclamation and the refining if you send it off to them. I don't know if they get a better return due to higher volume I don't know.
Hello, how you know that you didnt wet too far when you add the NaOH? is there any other way to change AgCl to silver? When i am doing this in large scale, i have some lump of AgCl which dont react with NaOH.
Would it be possible to rinse the plated items with acid removing the upper layer until all of the silver is dissolved and then discard or scrap the brass/copper base metal? That would reduce the amount of acid consumed.
Would it be more economically feasible to reverse electroplate the plated material instead of dissolving everything? Say like you had a good amount of plated silver utensils?
If I can ask honestly, is it worth it to purchase nitric acid or distill your own? I depleted a fair amount of junk silver but I'm not quite sure what the best way to purify is. If you could comment on what works best for you I would appreciate it.
Wish I would have found this video before I started buying silver. I have about 70 utensils that only 20 or so are not silver plated. Luckily I didn't offer much money for all of it, but I doubt I turn a profit if I refine it. Maybe it's still worth using the plated items to inquart my gold, but I'm not sure what the base metals are on some. One piece I cut up looks like a silver colored metal that turns green with silver test acid. Funny thing is every one of these pieces tested positive for silver because I didn't want to file into them before I bought them. Lesson learned! I'm not buying anymore silver unless it is stamped sterling!
Zeke, about 5% of silver jewelry marked 925 is not silver. Test each piece with schwerters. Putting schwerters on silver plated will test positive for silver. Got to go down into the metal with a file. It’s the only way, at our level, to be sure.
@@sreetips thank you. I was thinking about integrating a specific gravity test into my tests because some people obviously don't want me to file into there stuff before I buy it. Moving forward I will insist on them letting me or pass on the purchase. Honestly it seems silver plated material is everywhere and sterling is more rare than karat gold
For those I ask them if they want to know if it real. If it is then the test will reveal it and I buy the piece. If it’s not real, say silver over brass, then it’s almost worthless. If they refuse, then I walk away. A guy tried to sell me a gold bar in plastic. Before I buy I must take it out and test it. He refused so I handed it back and walked away. If they really want to sell then the test shouldn’t matter.
@@sreetips I'm thinking I might use sodium sulphite in a stripping cell to get the silver plate off. It is cheap and I would rather get what silver I can off for inquarting. The silver will use less nitric acid than copper or other base metals from what I'm reading.
There is a much cheaper way of doing silver plate. The formula is 19 parts sulfuric acid to one part nitric acid. Heat but only to about 140 F. The silver plate will turn white as it dissolves in the solution. When the white is gone, that piece is done. I use three buckets and a plastic colander. I let one batch drain while the next batch is working in the solution. After a batch is drained, I rinse in bucket number one, still in the colander, then bucket number two, then dumped in an empty bucket. Buckets one and two have two gallons of tap water in them. When the solution is spent, it will be very dark and will not take any more silver. I let the solution cool down to ambient temperature. I pour half the solution in each of the water buckets and add a saturated solution of un-iodized saltwater to turn the silver into silver chloride. Work it into silver metal as you wish. You might want to try it in one of your great videos. You do a great job. I enjoy them very much.
Frank, I printed this comment for future reference. I may try this later on. Thank you for the suggestion.
Same as sree I have over 30 plates cups bowls ectect collecting
I would love to see the process used.
Hi frank zahn, my name is Joshua. I processed some e-waste a decent amount of it for gold and I have a lot of the waist but I know there must be silver in. Personally, I think there’s a lot of silver, but I can’t figure out why it won’t precipitate. I don’t know if I neutralized the solution or not so I’m going to try that one more time, but can you give me any advice? I really need help on this because I could use the silver right now. Do you have the time please answer me back. Thank you.
@@sreetips hello sir, my name is Joshua. I asked the same question to the gentleman above. You seem like someone who is busy so I didn’t think to even ask you first. I processed some e-waste a while back, and the waste made a very deep, dark green solution. I know there’s a lot of silver in it but I can’t figure out how to precipitate it out. I have added hydrochloric acid to it. I’ve put copper in the solution hoping to cement it out. Can you please help me?
The little symbol A is a good guide as to the quality of the silver plate. There are tons of different systems and no standard but a century or so ago, many British makers used followed the gradings ...
A1 = Superior, A = Standard and then lower and lower grades below that B, C, D, E based on how many pennyweight was plated on. A1 was usually a troy ounce of silver per 12 tablespoons or forks.
Also don't get confused with stamped in Old English font which looks like a hallmark. That's electroplated nickel silver and usually pretty thin.
Thanks, really good to know :)!
There is also Extra 1a NS, 1a NS & Alpaca markings in Europe..
My local thrift stores all have piles of old silverplate-no one wants it anymore, and no one wants to polish it,either. I'm always on the hunt for Sterling, and I've found that Sterling items are ALWAYS marked "Sterling" -especially things made in the US. If you are serious about finding Sterling "in the wild", you have to know foreign hallmarks also-they won't say "Sterling" on them, but maybe just a stamped ".925" or something similar. British hallmarks are more involved, but you are always looking for the lion with the raised paw. At every thrift store, I always go through all the silverplate and old silverware-I've found an amazing amount of overlooked Sterling. My most common find are "weighted Sterling" candleholders-I've found dozens of them in the past two years. They are all just a thin skin of silver around a heavy cement or plaster base, but it all adds up.
Your videos have gotten much better over the last several years........ This one is new to me, but important for me to learn how much effort I should put into plated vs. sterling pieces.... Thanks
Mr Sreetips there is a very easy way to de-plate silver. A tub of salt water with a piece of stainless steel for the negative contact and hook the positive contact to the piece of plated silver. Run a current through it for 10-15 min and the silver will flake off
Then what?
@@lifeindetale I suppose dissolve in nitric and precipitate as AgCl or cement out with copper. In my experience the silver only plates off if you are lucky. It cements back onto the brass, and base metal oxides form at the anode and create a nasty foam. They can be converted to soluble salts by adding HCl, but then chlorine gas evolves at the cathode.
You are the Superman of recovering precious metal videos. Always worth watching and thanks Superman.
I think of him as the Walter White of home refining....LOL!
If you undershoot a little bit with the HCl, so you leave just a little silver nitrate in solution. You can filter out your silver chloride, and save the filtrate. You can then use the filtrate to dissolve more silver items, because when you add the HCl you also create nitric acid. You just want to undershoot with the HCl, because if some is left over it will react with the silver and form a AgCl coating keeping the nitric from dissolving it. That way you can save some money on buying more nitric. I actually just did this, it worked out pretty well.
I started buying junk silver from my area. I cant wait to try to do some refining.
Why? The junk silver is worth more than the silver you claim is pure. How can you prove that purity? I know the silver dime is 90% silver and I have a good idea of its weight and value.
@@allenjester3228 not when you call it just. Its worth less. Our testing things as humans have evolved over time. It was once used as currency. You don't think our means of testing is accurate? Do your thing . Do what makes you happy. Life is short.
We’re headed for an economic catastrophe. I’d rather have the constitutional / junk silver than take someone’s word for the value of an item that I don’t recognize. Junk silver has recognizable value. Practice with silver plate or obscure foreign coins and save the junk for us stackers.
@@allenjester3228 I get bars from my bank. Its all good.
@@frankz1125 What bank do you bank with ?
some companies call it Ultraplate, some call it Extraplate. I only found about it awhile back because my grandma had a bunch of it, than I started looking into it. It is very common, mostly older pieces but some newer ones can be found. Yes you can find several pieces with with very thin plating but thick plating isn't rare
Watching this now shows how much your processes have changed in the last few years.
I really enjoyed the calculation of the worth at the end there. Would love it if you did that in every video where you yield some precious metal.
C. M
Mmmm?m
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Love your videos my husband done his first gold recovery from scrap fingers. Thanks for the videos please keep them coming!!!
I'm trying to get my wife to make her own videos on how she finds the scrap for me to process. Without her I wouldn't be able to do this.
@@sreetips not sure if you will get to see my question to you but thought i would try to catch you here. I have some silver electronic wire pieces that dont dissolve in a hour of the acid. Will not turn blue niether in the dissolve state. Only in the copper bath does it turn blue. Any thoughts?
@@tracymcknight8978 some silver looking wire may be aluminum…
Just as plating I would never have imagined you could get that much silver off of that lid. Understand I dont doubt you a bit as I have learned how sharp you really are at this stuff. Im also extremely jealous at how productive you are and could only hope that I could ever do anything like what you do. I dont like toxic chemicals or agents. I would never work in a trade or plant that would put me anywhere near dangerous lab work. I worked in a production machineshop for just under 28yrs but I would bolt when they had painters painting the floor with very toxic paint. Whenever they painted in that building I bolted to get away. One of the painters never wore a mask I couldnt believe it. You would get a headache right away if you were anywhere near it. Im not exagerating. But you I have learned know exactly what you are doing. Do you have a chemistry degree because you work like a Scientist, I do really enjoy watching what you do and most of all when you end up with an incredible bar of Gold and Silver too. I always wonder if you really should be wearing a good mask or ventilator but I think you know what your doing.
My degree is in Aviation. I’m a retired Naval Engineer. I get whiffs of fumes every now and then. SO2 gas is the worst for me.
He uses respirators and fume hoods when needed. Chemicals are perfectly safe when handed with safety and respect. No need to " bolt away " just be smart and safe. You sound kind of childish actually
Problem with nitric its so damn expensive, atleast in 2023... Im not sure about US prices but in the UK its £106 for 5 litres of nitric, if you need to use 800ml to extract 10g of silver then its costing you money. I was thinking about refining karat gold scrap but the cost of the nitric just eats away all the profit plus some more :(
I buy six 2.5 liter bottles for two fifty. Was three hundred with the fifty dollar shipping charge. But last time I ordered, it was still two fifty, but the shipping charge went up to one fifty!
@@sreetips I can see why you only really do karat scrap, anything else is a complete waste of nitric and it appears that refining gold consumes far less nitric than silver.
Glad to see you back. Was worried that the little fiasco sapped your will to make videos. Keep them coming.
what little fiasco?
@@OwlTech333 In the video of refining the stock pot. One of the beakers spilled all over the floor.
@@authorunknown7262 Thanks
@@OwlTech333 the platinum recovery spill from his last series.
This bar sold for $53.00 because it was a Sreetips Original!
Thank you for taking the time and using your chemicals and shop to show us how to do what you do & now we know to just turn it into a recycling center as the base metal under the silver. ❤❤
Hey sreetips ! Thank you for all the great content you keep on making !
I have 10kg of silver plated items , it wont make sense to dissolve them in nitric as i will need alot of nitric to do that . I was wondering if sanding the silver off and refining the dust would be a better option ?
Good thought that way you would need much less nitric acid. Flat areas would be easier, relief areas would be tough.. Good idea though.
1
Ceviri
I have wondered how using a very course ceramic grit in a vibrating or even in a rotating polishing setup would work.
I initially had the idea to strip gold off of pins and fingers etc. as a way to speed up the process by not having to devolve all of the copper
sanbladt and screen
Thank you for sharing your calculation and satisfy my curiosity about the costs!
I finally got the store and I have huge silverware & scrap I gotta go through. It's time for me to learn it now. I told you I'd get that pawn shop in negotiations & now I own it😊
Nice! Treat your customers right and you’ll do fantastic.
Wondering about sandblasting the silver plate off of the items, then separating the sand and metals with simple tap water and a gold pan. Would allow you to drastically reduce the amount of nitric acid required to pull this off. Could maybe boost the financial feasibility of this specific operation.
I use reverse electroplating to remove silver plate it's actually rather simple to use and drastically reduces the amount of copper contamination to be removed later with the acids (also saves time because the removed silver plate falls off in small thin pieces and copper contaminant is a fine powder that desolves quickly). I use salt water as electrolyte and a car battery charger as a power source...
@Jacob Shrewsbury make sure to check your electroplated solution for silver after u get the silver flakes out, is usually leftover silver suspended in solution u can't see.
This was fun to watch but from a personal point of view, I believe the dish was more valuable as an attractive silver plate. Thanks.
It was a good looking dish, with an unusually thick coating of silver.
Best to melt into a sheet and electroplate the copper out with copper sulfate and sulfuric acid in a cell will get pure copper and anode slimes being able to reuse the acid many times lowering the acid cost
I don't have any experience with that. Can you make a video and show how it's done? Thanks for watching.
sodium sulphite is even better, non-toxic, cheap alternative.
@@sreetips Great video Sreetips. Glad you are back. :-) Nurd Rage has a video converting copper chloride, from PCB
etchant, to copper sulfate then plates out copper to recycle... essentially I would think it's pretty close to the same thing your doing converting the copper & silver nitrate to copper and silver chloride with HCL ... anyway check out the link. ua-cam.com/video/FjEoRidvgYE/v-deo.html
Look up "growing copper crystals". Electroplating with CuSO4 is actually the industrial process for refining copper. You just need a DC powersupply, a bucket and some CuSO4. Silver won't dissolve in sulfuric acid, but copper will. You're transfering copper from the anode to the kathode, pure silver will collect under the anode, as the copper gets dissolved. Also as you use dichromate for your testingsolution, I've no doubt that you can get CuSO4
We are now in 2023 : and It looks like that value is going up. There are three tangible items that will be worth so much after the dollar collapse. Everything else will be digital currency if we get lucky. Thank you for your demonstration it works for me.
Gold, silver, period.
Digital a good thing? Crazy thought.Must say at least you can physically hold paper bills..
Long after Apple, Amazon, bitcoin, and U.S. dollar are gone and forgotten, gold and silver will still be here. And they will still be valuable.
@@sreetips great to think that civilization may possibly be trending towards a 2nd bronze age! 😅
Hopefully not.
In your experience, what is the range of silver to total metal? It was 4.6% here but what is the general range? Thanks!
I contacted you on eBay. I have a bulk lot of Silverplate. I can sell the items by the piece, but shipping adds too much cost. Their size and shape make it hard to stuff a priority mail flat rate box full of it.
I can deliver if you want it.
Glad to see you back on!!!
Reed and Barton was (is?) a maker of high quality sterling and silver plate items. They would heavily plate their items-I see some things marked "Quadruple plated" also.
HI! I have a problem about silver recovery from silverplated silverware. The basic metal is zinc, then a thin layer of copper and then silverplating on. First i try to disolve whole spoon in nitric acid, but it starts to boil over the floor. I repead the proces with less concetrated nitric acid, the spoon is disolved, but i have a lot of powder on bottom, the liquid is blueish. So im guesing that zinc is on the bottom like powder, silver is in liquid? or did zinc something else to my silver? Now I will first melt the zinc away and scrap the upper layer down, and i will procced with that nugget forward
Zinc is soluble in nitric acid it will turn your solution green. Get a small sample of the blue liquid and test it with a few drops of hydrochloric acid like I did in the video. What ever is on the bottom, it shouldn't be zinc. It might be your silver.
@@sreetips Hi again. I finished disolving silverplated silverware in nitric acid, filtered it and put Hcl and nothing happened. Like no silver inside. No cloudiness... ;( Should I try put copper inside to cement silver?
But now I have second problem with recovering gold from cpu...I disolved 15cpu and few ram sticks in Hcl + hidrogen perokside (little), put those goldplating leaves in aqua regia, they disolved, filtered the liquid and today I got my smb by mail, (in Slovenia hard to buy), and surprise...nothing happened with liquid..like no mud at the bottom, still green yelowish colour...I put it so much that smb sit on the bottom...no reaction. Do you know what could go wrong? Should I put a little bit of urea inside?
I'm thrilled that you are making videos again. I was happy to make a small contribution to help continue this awesome content.
Mike, I am grateful to you, thank you! More videos are coming.
Alright, here we go again. When you get to the end, please be careful and don't spill it all. Thanks for coming back to teach us
I just sell my silver plated trays and such to my refiner for $1.75 per pound. Works for me.
Several other items missing from the cost analysis. Not a very cost effective way to obtain silver, but the chemistry was interesting. I am glad YOU did it.
Me too
FYI sulphuric acid stripping cell better way to go.
Yeah or salt water. Seems a waste of Nitric Acid
Yay you're back! I was worried about your wrists at times with that platinum.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, i'm working in a mining lab so we assay gold and silver from ore and pb concetrates. I dissolve the dore button with nitric acid with the purpose to dissolve silver and get a gold button and calculate its content in the samples. I generate a lot of silver nitrate solution every day and I precipitate it with HCl. I will suggest a method based on yours to take benefit of this waste and recover some silver. Greetings from Mexico.
Nice, glad you gained something. Thank you.
I'd say it is a profitable venture seeing where the bidding is, at current time. Quite Profitable if I do say so myself. Great video. Once again you don't disappoint.
Welcome back. You've bee missed, @Sreetips.
I like the addition of the cost vs return calculation in the vids. It's interesting to see the return on investment.
I'll try to give a brief overview of the roi in my videos from now on. I don't track expenses for each batch so it will be crude.
Glad you're back, thanks for the vid!
Hello and welcome back :) I'd wish you a happy New Year, but I think it would be nicer to wish you a BETTER year than last year :) And don't think what happened with your stockpot was a disaster...it'll be really exciting and interesting to see how you manage to get all the platinum back. Personally I can't wait to see how you're going to do it :) I'm sure a lot of viewers will agree with me. Thanks for another entertaining video
I'll me getting to it starting Friday
Great to see you back again! I was hoping that the stock pot refining disaster did not take the wind out of your sails for continuing your videos.
Mike. I'm going to process all the paper from the mess I made. Should be several hundred dollars worth of metal.
Usually plated will have an “A” or “community plate”
I don’t know about you guys but that blue liquid looks like it tastes delicious.
If you knew the base metal was copper you could etch it out with cupric chloride or ferric chloride which is a lot cheaper than nitric.
Ferric would also dissolve brass base metals.
Or would that not work due to contaminants or unwanted metals like iron, tin, zinc?
Probably have to cut it into smaller pieces to expose more base metal because those solutions are not as aggressive as nitric.
I’ve never worked with those
@@sreetips My electronics hobby, we use cupric chloride and /or ferric chloride to etch copper off printed circuit boards, ferric will also etch brass.
I was just thinking those might works for dissolving out copper and brass plus they are a lot cheaper than Nitric.
Of course ferric chloride works work, but it would take quite some time. The benefit is the obvious fact that no workup is required after the dissolution step; just rince the silver and you're good to go!
@@glennbartusch7310 With all the stuff Sreetips has laying around and tied up in waste solutions, I don't think that letting it sit around for the time it would take to dissolve the copper would bother him much.
However the process might not work on high percentage alloys for the same reason that you have to inquart some gold alloys.
glad your back, was concerned you stopped doing videos or something, keep up the good work!
Thanks Zach
the best way to test silver is with 18k test acid. and a super tiny drill bit you can find them in beuty stores they use then for finger nails. you just find a spot drill in past the plated test with the acid if it turns green its plated. then after that spot can be fixed buy a buffing pad if the person wants to repair the peace.
I prefer a file and schwerter's solution. Fast and easy
First time watching! Stumbled upon video while researching Büchner funnel uses. I have a bunch of those Büchner funnels. Are they worth waiting to sell to people on eBay?
If you find the right buyer. Not many even know what they are.
@@sreetips Great use of chemistry by the way! 👍
I'll buy some
@@shortsenstuff I’ll send some pictures after work. How many do you need?
"Thick" silver plate is often silver "clad" rather than plate. This is done when the flat sheet of metal is made, already clad in the silver then it stamped out and presses into shape.
What do you do with the copper solution, can you recover from that?
Check nurd forge . You can recover copper metal and nitric acid.
I tried using a Sliver Cell setup to strip Silver plate from objects like that. I used Potassium Nitrate as the electrolyte. It seems to work. Pretty quickly too.
only potassium nitrate no acid in the electrolyte...
I’d like to try it.
i send you the formula and the steps to operate the bath if you like... so you can tray it in small scale to anderstand the process its very economical and kwicly done.
What's the composition of the fumes that leave the solution?
Nitrogen dioxide
Experiment was not for the production of... Or the extraction of silver.
This was just a good experiment.
Had this been an ACTUAL ATTEMPT at recovering sliver... A lot more.
A LOT MORE plated or any particular products you want to place in the beaker. In order to recover higher amounts of silver concentrate.
Would have been added !
After all the materials and time I'd say its not worth it unless you have nothing better to do
In the UK most silver plated items have the "EPNS" stamped on them. This stands for Electro Plated Nickel Silver.
Ive seen it. I look for EP (electroplated) but I can also tell by the texture of the surface.
I have a question? When you melted your silver cement in the wet filter. Did you use any flux like Borax? I know you glazed you dish before melting? Did you add borax to that silver burn? Streetips your my favorite you tube channel. I have learned so much. Never stop doing your vids. Thxs so much
I don’t think I did. But if I did it was very small amounts only
No commercials, I subscribed. love your videos!
You could use one of those electric grinders the use to break apart materials. Save yourself a bunch of time.
Having your wife showing some of her shopping trips with hints would be great. The secret to making this a profitable hobby is a good, steady source of reasonably priced raw materials.
I agree - would make killer videos.
You didn't filter the test tube contents before pouring into the filtered solution. So it could be slightl impurities in the melted chunk...
Would it be most cost effective to electro strip the silver directly off the base metal into solution then recover.
Chuck, I don't know because I don't have any experience with stripping the silver off. With silver at $16 my guess is probably not. Especially when there is so much silver scrap jewelry out there. Stripping off a few grams doesn't make much sense when you can buy scrap sterling silver for pennies, if you know where to look.
@@sreetips where to look?
@@sreetips where do you look for the scrap sterling silver?
Thank you,Chuck.
Awesome, I’m clumsy so I wouldn’t try my ideas myself. I have a box of gold and silver plated jewelry and some 40%coins I’d like to eventually get the gold silver and copper from. are their trustworthy refiners I could send to that don’t charge an arm and two legs for it.
But seriously I pretty much can do it but I’d need instruction step by step on paper just so I don’t miss any steps
I've watched this video a few times I'm getting ready to do a big lot my question is would it save on acid perhaps not time but if you de electro plate your items the powder or mud that comes out isn't pure silver would this method right hear work 1/. 2 would it save my acid any 3 would you be willing to do a video on it keep in mind I have like 20 pounds of silver plate no way I can make that profitable unless I have a renewable reducer just curious on your take
I have a bin full of silver plated items. I don’t know how to de-plate the silver yet.
I wasn't interested at all in this topic but I watched it all from start to finish lol
How are you doing all the report??? When I pour raw silver, there is no shine, all the tin. I ask you to explain to me, and I wish you all the success in all your work. 🙏✍️
Sorry, I don’t understand your question
You might want to look into the value of that cookware you're using. Those old floral decorated Corning dishes are going for a bit of money.
Question??? Why didn't you just use plain non iodine salt in place of the hydrochloric acid to drop the silver out of solution? Is the result different? All your vids get my mind working in over drive .. thank you so much for the education.
Plain salt can be used. I have plenty of hydrochloric acid and I like the convenience of just pouring it in.
Hi Sreetips, I am a new watcher and you have me hooked. QUESTION: what is the orange gas and would it make the reaction and therefore nitric acid use more efficient if a condenser was used to drop it back into the beaker?
Orange gas = nitrogen dioxide. Refluxing it would improve efficiency.
Thanks for the breakdown at the end. What about the sodium hydroxide $ what is your time worth and what is the Map gas for melting it down cost $$ all is overhead. so to me, it looks like you might break even at best. Is it any cheaper to just smelt it down from the start ?
It’s my hobby. I don’t keep track of expenses for each batch.
Ya I got that, I just been looking at doing this sort of thing but don't want to do it and not at least come out a bit ahead. Thanks for the reply.@@sreetips
I see. The only reason I did this was because I seen how thick the silver coating was over the base metal. Most silver plated stuff is not that thick. This item was unusually thick, and that’s why I choose to do it.
I collect scrap Sterling and a bit of Silverplate, there are definitely different thicknesses of plated silver items, some even say triple plate on them not that that means much. On the profit side of things, I find that collecting and reselling sterling silver rings and things or even plated items as the item itself has a higher profit than smelting or chemical refining. So then I buy a high-quality 999. Silver rounds or bullion, it is a better bet. Well as long as you are having Fun that's what it is about.@@sreetips
Do you have a video showing what you do with the blue copper mix? Do you chemically change it into copper???
Yes it can be done. Check Nurdrage youtube channel.
I change it to copper in my waste treatment bucket. The copper comes out of the blue solution as metallic copper on pieces of angle iron.
Glad to see you back.
That last video was devastating.
I'm going to get some metal from that paper and cardboard. Watch for the video.
@@sreetips
We are all looking forward to seeing that.
This is absolutely one of the best science channels on UA-cam.
Quick qustion for you chief. If there was some gold also in this solution would adding the hcl cause the gold to come out of solution with the silver?
No
Thanks for your great Video, very instructional as always ! One question, It´s possible to "UnPlate" the item, that is, using the appropriate electrolyte can electrically remove the thin layer of silver ? Maybe this way is economically feasible.
Yes it is, there are a few people who've posted videos on this :)!
There is a way to do it, but I’ve not mastered it. Maybe when silver gets up around a hundred bucks.
I wanted to watch this, to see silver recovery I have thousands and thousands of silver contacts. I want to someday process. It looks like it should be one of the easier pm to process, but I'm going to study and study until I'm very confident I can do it. Probably years in the future.
Thanks for the GREAT VIDEO!!!
Make sure there is no cadmium in those contacts.
Where do you buy the acid from
Hello, the greatest chemist in the world, thank you for spreading your experience to the viewers. I have an urgent question. I am working on extracting gold from rocks and stones crushed with aqua regia, and I work on large quantities. I have a problem, which is how do I know that the solution is saturated and will not be able to dissolve more gold and I have to replace it? Thank you
Extracting gold from crushed rock is not something I have experience with.
Thank you for this video very informative. I am interested to know what the copper solution is. Is it copper oxicloride?
The blue liquid is copper nitrate.
Great video. Would this process be the same if I wanted to recover silver from the waste that I got from my initial gold recovery? To be more precise I recovered gold from CPUs but I know there's silver in the waste. Do I recover this silver like you've done in this video so basically adding distilled water and nitric acid to the waste solution and continuing like u did or is there another way? Would highly appreciate your reply. Thank you so much.
Or do I add copper to the waste solution to cement the silver out. I'm a little confused as to what the next step will be to recover the silver. Help pls. 😬
If you have silver in solution then you can add copper to "cement" the silver out. However, if your solution contains any hydrochloric acid then this won't work. Hydrochloric acid added to a silver nitrate solution will immediately precipitate silver chloride. The silver chloride can be recovered and converted to pure silver metal with lye and sugar. You can test your unknown solution by putting some in a test tube then add HCl. If silver is present then you'll immediately see a cloud is silver chloride form.
That makes sense now. Thank you so much 😀
That was pretty interesting street. I recycle off and on and I have about 5 lb of silver plated copper wire. I would like to melt it down and retrieve the silver and copper to recycle the copper as copper 2 and take the silver to a jewelry store and get paid for the silver. Anyway of just melting it down on the store or with a propane torch? I'm not much into using chemicals.
If you melt the wire then the metals will alloy together.
What about extracting the gold from mineralized outcrops? Like say malichite and chrysicola to get the copper out, or silver from pyrargynite? Is there a way to get the gold out of the pyrite. I have a indigo blue metal with gold veins and pyrite in it that sets my metal detector off that has copper and iron keyed out so it dont read them. I want the gold out.
Sorry, I don’t have any experience processing ore
37:32 I assume this is Copper chloride solution with some trace silver chloride some trace copper nitrate and unconverted silver nitrate in that white bucket. Can this be mixed in with your silver waste bucket with the pour offs from regular silver cementation?
I would like to see you do a refining of keyboard mylars & to know if you know how you could incenerate the mylars to recover the silver
Great video!!! When does adding borax make sense in process like this?
I add borax to the melt dish to keep the silver from sticking to the dish
like your video. think I would take an angle grinder to that plate inside your containment box and remove all the silver that way then sweep it all into beaker that would eliminate having to dissolve everything and yield per acid used would be much higher
Kirt, I'd rather let the chemicals do all that work for me.
Nice video and great way to get pure silver but I have about 100 pieces of silver plated flatware and 20 or so silver plated platters and I am looking for an easier and more economical way to get the silver out of all that. I am pretty sure most of it has a thinner plating than your platter did so I believe nitric acid will just cost too much. Have any ideas that will not require days of labor or cost more than the silver is worth? Have a wonderful day.
Scott, this is my first try with silver plated scrap. Maybe when silver gets to $100 per ounce then it will become viable to use nitric to get it off of silver plated items. For now, I don't know any other ways of getting the silver - yet.
I've seen 2 or 3 people on UA-cam do it with electrolysis and it looks pretty easy. Here's a video from Moose Scrapper: ua-cam.com/video/H_LbT3mhilI/v-deo.html
I watched the Moose Scrapper video. That dude could really use a nice set of Corning Ware. Just sayin'.....
Very impressive. btw, how sugar can transfer silver oxide into pure silver?? is it a reduction reaction?
I'm not a chemist. I just know that adding the sugar converts the silver oxide to pure silver. Something to do with the carbon in the sugar, I think.
Is there any way to strip the silver off without completely dissolving the base metals as well, or will the silver continue to cement out onto the base metal requiring that is be completely dissolved? I have a very large amount of silver plated items that I was hoping to strip, and am trying to figure out exactly how much nitric acid and total volume of liquids will be required throughout the process.
Yes, but I’ve not tried it yet.
I really enjoyed this video and learning more about silver plate. I was surprised by the amount at the end. I also really liked going through the costs and seeing that it is not worth it to separate it. I wonder also though about how much the copper is worth that was in it. 😀😀
Got a question Mate - I tried following you, but to less sodium hydroxide in and than already put th3 sugar, than noticed that Nothing comes out, so I add more naoh after the sugar was added, than it reacted and got hot, but no silver participated out, so what doing now? Cheers and thanks for.sharing
That’s baffling, I’ve never encountered that.
Nice vid, thanks. Do you think buying scrap silverplate is worth it?
Right now, with silver at $16, it would cost more to get the silver than it's worth. But that can change.
i wonder if the cost efficiency could be improved by grinding the silver off the surface first
You can clearly see it's coppery color where you filed without any chemicals. The file test is far more reliable than any chemicals.
ever process quadruple plated silver? It is supposed to more silver in that.
Glad to see and what is the name of your gloves what type that is
Nitrile
Would larger quantities lower the cost to recovery ratio? I know it would increase the time and the materials cost, but trying to decide if refining the silver plate is worth it to have the silver to stockpile. I guess the same question for gold applies.
The only reason I did this is because this piece had a thick coating of silver over the brass. I filed deep into the metal. Then looked under magnification. I could see the thick coating of silver. Most silver doesn’t have a thick coating like that. Even with this thick coating, it still cost more in nitric acid than its worth. There are more economical methods to get the silver plate off of the plated stuff. But the amount of silver will be small.
@@sreetips understand it won't be a great deal. I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth the effort to slowly add to a stack of silver. If I can go to an estate sale or a thrift store and pick up a box of silver plated items for 5 to 10 bucks and maybe get an equivalent amount of money out of it in silver, regardless of the materials cost, it would be technically adding to my stock. I saw an ad for a company that offers to do the reclamation and the refining if you send it off to them. I don't know if they get a better return due to higher volume I don't know.
I’ll look into it a little deeper. There are some methods to get the small amount of silver off and just let it build up over time.
Hello, how you know that you didnt wet too far when you add the NaOH? is there any other way to change AgCl to silver? When i am doing this in large scale, i have some lump of AgCl which dont react with NaOH.
I use a Braun, hand held blender to mix to consistent black color - it’s perfect
Would it be possible to rinse the plated items with acid removing the upper layer until all of the silver is dissolved and then discard or scrap the brass/copper base metal? That would reduce the amount of acid consumed.
No, the silver will cement out just as fast as it dissolves.
Would it be more economically feasible to reverse electroplate the plated material instead of dissolving everything? Say like you had a good amount of plated silver utensils?
I don’t know how to deplete silver.
If I can ask honestly, is it worth it to purchase nitric acid or distill your own? I depleted a fair amount of junk silver but I'm not quite sure what the best way to purify is. If you could comment on what works best for you I would appreciate it.
I’ve never attempted to make my own nitric acid. Much easier to buy it already made.
Could one get away with using a food grade sodium hydroxide or is there even much of a difference?
Did you say $5 for the plate also. So an even lower return?
Wish I would have found this video before I started buying silver. I have about 70 utensils that only 20 or so are not silver plated. Luckily I didn't offer much money for all of it, but I doubt I turn a profit if I refine it. Maybe it's still worth using the plated items to inquart my gold, but I'm not sure what the base metals are on some. One piece I cut up looks like a silver colored metal that turns green with silver test acid. Funny thing is every one of these pieces tested positive for silver because I didn't want to file into them before I bought them. Lesson learned! I'm not buying anymore silver unless it is stamped sterling!
Zeke, about 5% of silver jewelry marked 925 is not silver. Test each piece with schwerters. Putting schwerters on silver plated will test positive for silver. Got to go down into the metal with a file. It’s the only way, at our level, to be sure.
@@sreetips thank you. I was thinking about integrating a specific gravity test into my tests because some people obviously don't want me to file into there stuff before I buy it. Moving forward I will insist on them letting me or pass on the purchase. Honestly it seems silver plated material is everywhere and sterling is more rare than karat gold
For those I ask them if they want to know if it real. If it is then the test will reveal it and I buy the piece. If it’s not real, say silver over brass, then it’s almost worthless. If they refuse, then I walk away. A guy tried to sell me a gold bar in plastic. Before I buy I must take it out and test it. He refused so I handed it back and walked away. If they really want to sell then the test shouldn’t matter.
@@sreetips very good points. Thank you for the info.
@@sreetips I'm thinking I might use sodium sulphite in a stripping cell to get the silver plate off. It is cheap and I would rather get what silver I can off for inquarting. The silver will use less nitric acid than copper or other base metals from what I'm reading.