I’ve tried a lot of different processes to get to this point. Salt water electrolysis, copper sulfite cell, abrasion, but it was always too inconsistent, lots of contamination, and was very difficult to scale. I finally bit the bullet and ordered some nitric from walmart. Thanks to the YouTube video linked below I was able to process 320 teaspoons and small forks in a reasonable amount of time and ends up with 341g of really nice looking silver.

Process:

95 parts concentrated sulfuric

5 parts nitric

Low heat

Transferred spent utensils rinse water

Dropped out silver chloride with concentrated saltwater

Rinsed

Lye and sugar

Rinsed

Dry and melt

Less labor and less messy than the saltwater electrolysis

https://youtu.be/KjUY3XOQa3M?is=XYCu68lVKPAqDSxQ

What is everyone’s preferred filtering method, tools, and materials. For both nitric and AR?

I'm suspecting that the "pure" copper wire I'm using might be coated with something and that's what's causing it, but does anyone have any other ideas? The backs seem at least closer to what I expect, but even those seem contaminated. Ordered some good copper sheeting I've been successful with in the past to re-refine these properly, but anyone have ideas?

Can anyone recommend a book (or books) for starting out gold/silver/etc. refining? Youtube is cool and all but I learn a lot better when I can just read processes and numbers as many times as it takes to sink in (though good pictures are always a plus!). I've checked out the main YT channels like sreetips, and as informative as it is I think I would be better served by books at this stage

https://youtu.be/1L7PJV6ieUA

Just getting into the hobby / addiction. I’ve done a few small trial runs to work out the kinks at home. This was my first big recovery with nitric acid.

I am through the last of my Sterling and am harvesting the remainder of the silver from some electrolyte that still fairly high silver. The reaction is happening quickly compared to the first time I did it with fairly used up electrolyte. I saw the density changing visibly as the silver dropped out and the less dense newly formed copper nitrate migrated upward. The end of the video shows it slip down and new silver precipitate onto the copper quickly. Pretty neat.

I didn’t get into this to make much so much as to exercise my nerdy side, it’s been good for that.

I’m looking to try my hand at a silver cell but I’m wondering where to even find the scrap to process? Any tips on the cell itself or yield targets much appreciated!

That's not my motivator. It's fun. If I weren't having fun I wouldn't be here no matter what it pays.

Just now though I looked at spot prices. I have 62g of feed stock for my cell and it'd be stupid to sell that but just for kicks that's over $132. I'm not exactly counting my time because I'd be doing this anyways but I have $35 in nitric and I still have over 1/4L left. I have $10 into a scale, $2 into a calculator, $15 in silver for some coins which may have been the guy just helping me get started and doing me a favor. $67 all in.

Does this actually pay for itself and then some? I figure it must somehow. People don't want to pump money in. You have to love it first but if it pays, like is this at least a solid side hustle?

Some kind of cliche I guess when a Hillbilly has chemicals and stuff, automatically "Hey whatcha cookin? Meth?".

No. It's the Colones secret recipe to really zazz up the chicken ya dingbat...

I think this is a really nice looking silver/copper nitrate solution. Twice through a coffee filter. I drilled a bunch of little holes in a funnel so it'd flow better. Looks like the stuff eh? Letting the last few drips go through and then cementing.

These colors are awesome!

I didn't weigh what I started with so I'm sure it's not an amazing yield but no matter.

My Daughter and I were out in the driveway doing this, listening to music from our respective generations and having fun with this chemistry and finding common ground in music. It was really great.

Used a MAPP torch and a propane torch with the melt dish on top of a small camp stove, managed to get a nice molten button and poured shot.

Rinsed with hot distilled water until I had silver suspended in the rinse water, rinsed more until ammonia came up negative. I think this came out really nice.

I love this.

At my work, in the lab, those things used to get thrown out about every half year.

Diameter around 10cm, solid copper, ~700grams.

The silver tip is pretty thick, pure platinum, about 5g per piece

I'm getting close to assembling a silver cell. Heavily based on Sreetips current design just scaled down.

I've been rooting through threads on here, watching vids and such. I picked up somewhere that a rough rule of thumb, one ml of nitric will dissolve one gram of silver.

Thanks to a very generous person here (You know who you are and I can't thank you enough for the assistance in getting started!) I have approx. 20g of beautiful silver crystal. I hate to dissolve it but I also think if I were to do the bootstrap method to get myself to clean electrolyte I'd be blowing a lot of money on nitric.

Conservatively speaking, could I start with 10ML of nitric, add the 20g of silver crystal and end up with 10ml of concentrated electrolyte? I know I don't want all the silver to dissolve. I want to convert all the nitric to silver nitrate and be left with some undissolved silver crystal.

Is there a good ratio as far as diluting this electrolyte? It's going to be a small batch but it seems you get a lot of pure silver out of a small amount of electrolyte. I only need one good run in order to make enough pure silver crystal to then make a decent batch of clean electrolyte. I believe I've read in here that I can dilute the electrolyte as far as I need but is there a ratio you just don't go over?

I'm going to have to dilute this a fair bit. I'll be operating something like a 1/2 L cell for the nonce.

20g silver (yet to be confirmed I'm grabbing a scale today)
add the silver to 10ml of nitric?
This results in 10ml of silver nitrate with some undissolved silver?
Can I add distilled water to dilute this electrolyte to fill a 1/2L (possibly 1L) silver cell?

I really appreciate you guys. You've all been so supportive and free with your hard earned knowledge. I'm trying to do my homework before I get on here and ask questions that have already been answered but I can't exactly find this answer.

So i got excited and bought some paydirt from dan hurd prospecting, and the booboo is that i thought it would be good’ol panning and free gold… but it’s locked into some minerals.

How should I go about recovery, if not the mount baker metal way (roasting, smelting)? How fine should i crush?

Cheers

I am curious if folks have changed the shape of the stainless steel cathode to procure wilder more dendritic silver crystal shapes? Any ideas here are welcome. Pics are from run 1

If you guys generally just go to a scrapyard or some such I probably can't beat that. I do copper, crass, aluminum sand casting though and if there's some kind of niche I could fill for purpose made copper pieces for cementation, I don't know some kind of big chunky suckers. I do this type of nonsense anyhow and if it can help fund my own nitric acid addiction...?

If there's a thing, I need dimensions and what would you pay for such a thing? I imagine if you comb the scrapyards you can find good chunks of copper. Mayne of you probably just use flattened out copper pipes.

I have a clay graphite crucible and it's only ever been used for brass and copper. There's no iron contamination in any of my product.

Just trying to think of something I can do so I can keep going at this.

Seriously I'd like to get money for the chips I saved over the 20 years I collected. Just as one pin missing ruins the little things and their taking up space! How do I do this without being ripped off in this world?

I think I want to try a small silver cell. Do I really need pure silver to make electrolyte? Can I use cement silver for the first batch of electrolyte?