.925 refined and poured into .999 bar

I have 10 plus maybe more ounces of .925,,,i am sure i can manage to melt it and pour a bar of .925 but how could/should i go about doing it if i wanted it refined to .999 if possible

 

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There are chemicals you have to add to bring the impurities out. Namely soda ash and borax. The amount depends on how much metal you're melting. Shoot me a pm, I may have some literature lying around I could share with you....Dennis

 

I don't think a privately made bar would be very acceptable ! Better off as spoons and forks. IMO

 

There is also a chemical method (acid) but unless you are really knowledgeable on chemistry you could really screw things up, including your lungs!

 

is there a place that would do it for me then

 

As mentioned, chemicals are involved with each type. If you have handled conc. Nitric acid before, you might try this

http://voices.yahoo.com/how-refine-own-silver-1640969.html?cat=24

If you have a blacksmith forge or foundry equipment, you could try the other.

I would not recommend it for the amount you might save to refine it yourself. Nitric acid isn't cheap, nor is your health.

 

Yeah, you got that right. It simply doesn't make economical sense to try to make .925 into .999. Maybe on a larger scale, like a truck load but 10 to 20 ounces should be left as they are, jmho.

 

Leave it as is.

 

If it is real important to you to have .999 then sell the sterling and buy .999 rounds.

 

I have a couple of ounces of scrap .90 and .925 and I can understand where hemi is coming from. I am saving it specifically for the purpose of refining it myself once I get 10+ ounces. Of course I understand I could just sell it to a refiner and buy myself some .999, but I just want to do it myself for the fun of it.

 

I have refined silver myself on a small scale, and this ^ is the best answer ive seen so far. I used the Nitric Acid method and dissolved my coins and spoons to complete liquid, then used coffee filters and basic household items to recover the silver. For example I used pieces of copper scrap laying around the house to act as the catalyst to reform the pure silver crystals, then I lined household funnels with coffee filters and collected the 'gray' mud and rinsed until the water dripping out was clear instead of bright blue.

Once my gray mud was 'cleaned' i let it dry on a piece of wax paper under a heat lamp for an hour our 2. Then I took my 'gray cake powder' AKA pure silver before its final form and used a potato and cinder block as my smelting block.

I shallowed a small hole and then burnt the inside of the potato, to where i placed my powder and heated with a small propane blow torch from lowes. Once its heated you can see it melt and form together as silver, if you use real tiny amounts you can get nice almost perfectly round and smooth little silver shot. I didnt of course, so I ended up with larger clumps that didnt turn out quite as beautiful as I had hoped, but the experiment was still a huge success.

I can probably locate the guide i used if anybody is interested, I had no chemistry or science skills prior and it worked out well for me. They are right though, the nitric acid is kind of expensive, and the process is time consuming. It was fun though, and if the world ever ends I will have the first hand experience and know how to refine silver using everyday items and methods. Not a bad skill to have i should think, I mean this method allows you to recover silver AND purify it from almost any form it would likely be in.

 

Did you calculate your recovery rate?, just curious to see how much you might loose in the process.

 

I did not mention that it is jewelry

 

No I actually didn't take weights and measurements. My main concern at those stages was making sure I followed the directions and used proper precaution playing with the chemicals. It didn't appear like I lost too much, but I'm sure I lost some as I didn't know some of the things to expect and perform properly early on to ensure I didn't lose anything. That's also why I never moved on to gold. It's such a primitive process and I am still unsure of my retention rate and golds too expensive to even miss a milligram.

 

OK, but then what do you with this glob of silver when you are done experimenting? Do you expect me to buy it from you ?

Now you have to send it to a refiner ?

I don't see how it is at all saleable,

 

Well there's always that angle if you wanted to sell it. I'm not selling mine, but if I did want to you do know PLENTY of people buy homemade silver off eBay like ALL the time don't you? Just type in Silver Shot in the search bar, that's essentially the same idea. No one KNOWS that silver is pure but plenty of people sure are buying it. How about homemade hand poured bars that are just simply stamped with some ABC refiner that no longer exists but still gets purchased? There's uninformed buyers everywhere. I've even purchased homemade silver in those forms. Granted that was before I had the understanding of coins and such which is why my collecting is largely based around silver content now. I realized I wanted items that people are able to identify in my collection more than a bunch of homemade bars and shot.

 

Ugh.

First of all, nitric acid is expensive and hard to come by. If you do manage to get some for cheap, yes, you can refine silver yourself; if you don't care about laws or ethics, you can dump your waste NO2 into the air and your waste copper nitrate into the drain, dodging some emission-control expenses that the big refiners incur. (That's a bit harsh, I guess; a home operation refining a few ounces of silver isn't going to Destroy The Environment, but it certainly isn't being very neighborly.)

Will your product be .999? Good question. If your technique is very good, and your'e willing to let some silver go unreclaimed, it's possible. If you're scraping silver off a copper wire, and then melting it in a baked-potato crucible, I think .999 is a bit of a stretch. Your product will be better than sterling, but probably not .999.

Can you sell the product as .999? To a refinery, probably not; they might be willing to analyze it, but they'll charge you for that work. On eBay? Sure -- for that matter, you could probably sell sterling shot as .999, and rarely get caught at it.

If you want to try this as an interesting science experiment, go for it! I did it myself when I was a teen (starting with a silver Roosie). I hope you have better ventilation than I did.

If you want to do it so you can get more money out of your sterling, you're barking up the wrong tree.

 

I think that the OP is trying to refine what he has just as an attempt to test his skills. I've thought about melting .999 and repouring it just to see if I could do it.

 

You absolutely can refine silver at home and get it to .999 and yes you can sell it for more money granted you have the skills and tools needed to pour and stamp a professional looking bar. Furnaces, large stamps, acetylene/oxygen torches, and professional steel molds can cost around 1000.00 for all. It would not be feasible to do all this for 10 OZ but if you plan to buy alot of silver upwards of several hundred ounces or pounds it's definitely worth it.***** The first thing you do is disolve your silver in nitric acid. DO THIS OUTSIDE. It will produce red No2 fumes that are deadly if you breath them in I where a gas mask and do this outside. You can purchase a gas mask on ebay for 20.00 any military 42mm gas mask will work. Once desolved dilute it 50/50 with distilled water and put a clean copper pipe in it. The copper will replace the silver and silver will immediately start forming on the copper pipe.Once this step is complete you need to rinse the silver cement till it runs clear through a filter and funnel. Use only distilled water and use boiling water on your last few rinses. Then Dry it. Then Melt it. At this point you have silver that is almost pure it will be around 98.9-99 % pure. Then you need to make a AGN03 solution with silver nitrate and water about 1.7grams per 50 ml of water. Which you can also make yourself by disolving .999 silver in nitric acid and let air dry into silver nitrate crystals or just buy it on ebay. At this point you will need 4 AA rechargeable batteries, 2 pieces of copper sheet, Sterling wire, a piece of cloth, a 2 liter bottle,and a piece of .999 silver.You take all of this and basically do electrolysis that will grow pure .999 silver crystals. There is a you tube video on this as well that will give you an idea of what I am saying. Just Google silver refine video. I have done this with literally hundreds of ounces of silver and pour and stamp my own bars. I have no problem selling and yes it is .999 pure as you can get but you must grow the crystals to get it to .999. It cost me about 1.30 an ounce to refine you tell me if you think it is feasible. Personally I would rather have bullion than junk silver it's worth more and looks much better. Matter of fact I have two different beakers growing crystals as we speak.
There you have it.

 

Where do you go to get inexpensive nitric acid, and where do you live that you don't have neighbors or authorities hassling you over your toxic emissions -- or, worse, mistaking you for a meth cooker?

Yeah, you can do this, but I have to think that it's impractical for nearly everybody.