Dummies Guide to EASY silver bullion refining at home as a long term precious metal investment

reply to post by tauristercus


AWESOME awesome job! When you have the time... the GOLD method would be really great...

Thanks loads for this!

Dasman

It's threads like this that make me return to ATS everyday! AWESOME information.

I wanted to contribute a bit to your thread. As a chemical operator for 20 years, with a little over 5 years of that time spent in a precious metals refinery. Of coarse the processes used in a commercial refinery are a bit different from your process here, your process is sound and should work well for what you are doing.

I see some people here are asking if this is legal. The answer is that as far as the US is concerned yes it is. As for the dissolving of coins, if they are out of circulation, (not being minted any more) then there is no problem. If they are currently in circulation, then there is a law about defacing money to consider. In the US there should be no problem due to the fact that the silver content in present coins is minuscule at best, and they would not be worth the time to refine.

Others have asked if the silver would be worthless due to lack of markings. The answer is no it would not. A simple assay would establish the purity of the metal and therefore a simple calculation involving the weight and purity of the metal would establish the value.

In the refining industry the purity of any precious metal is referred to as 9's of purity. 99.9% pure metal would be referred to as 3-9's of purity. Where as 99.999% metal would be called 5-9's of purity. This level of purity is established with an assay of the metal either wet or dry. I won't go into the different ways of assaying metal as the chemistry and methods are a bit beyond most folks. As a side note, 5-9's of purity is the level of purity required for a precious metals use in electronics.

In the refinery that I worked, the silver refining process was an electric process where by the scrap was melted into anodes and hung in a bath of nitric acid solution. Electricity was passed through the apparatus causing the anodes to dissolve. the contaminants went into solution and remained there. The pure silver is deposited on the cathode and then scraped off into a stainless steel basket in the bottom of the solution tank. This silver is now of 5-9's purity and after rinsing and drying is crystalline in nature. The industry refers to it as silver sponge until it is assayed and melted into bars.

As for the disposal of the dissolving solution, as the OP states, put it down the drain with copious amounts of water. This will dilute it to the point that it will be rendered harmless. The quantity of solution (nitric acid and water) is minuscule. If enough water is added then the solution will be unnoticeable.

Some have asked if the copper could be reclaimed. The answer is yes it could. However the process for reclaiming it would not be cost effective on such a small scale.So I would recommend forgetting about this idea.Copper needs to be processed on a very large scale in order to be cost effective due to the low value of copper.

Some one asked about battery acid. The answer is no. Battery acid is dilute sulfuric acid and would not be suitable for this process.

In my effort to help out the OP I may have missed some questions that were posted here. Please feel free to u2u me if I missed your question. I would be happy to answer any questions that I can.

To the OP..... wonderful thread. this is a very good process and also easy to do. While great care should be taken with the nitric acid, it is a good way to reclaim silver. 3-9's of purity is actually pretty good for such a simple process. As a warning to any who attempt this ... Always, and I can't be more serious about this, add acid to water and very slowly, otherwise you can get a splattering of the solution on yourself. You will notice an elevation of temperature in the solution as you add the nitric to the water. This is normal. Be careful with the acid as it can hurt you. I would recommend safety glasses and,or a face shield as well as rubber gloves. Wouldn't hurt to have a rubber apron available either. These precautions are the norm in the industry. At the present time I am working maintenance in a metal plating plant and these precautions are standard.

So if you want to try this then have at it but be aware of the dangers involved in handling acid. In closing remember what the OP said about doing this outside in a well ventilated area. Any reaction involving acid can produce gasses that can be harmful. The most dangerous would probably be hydrogen. Very flammable so no smoking around this process.

Awesome OP,
I am also a silver buff and this is right up my alley.
One could also make up thier own mould so you could have custom made "buttons" with your own stamp/logo on it...very cool.

You have a good thread, but you sure aren't improving anything, and your not saving any money, and your not making any extra money by what you are doing.

The value that you can get for the silver in the coins without doing all that work is worth just as much or more in their original form of coins, even if they are foriegn coins. Some refineries will pay you 95 percent of what any gold or silver item you have is worth for the gold or silver value; so... your waisting time doing all that other work. Just because you refined it yourself doesn't mean its worth more than what the coins were worth in their original condition. Let the refinery do all the work for free, and they will still pay you 95% of its true value.

reply to post by tauristercus


Hey man, you've got my vote for posting the process for gold...

This looks like something that can actually be of of real practical use if money becomes useless - not in the least because the little globlets you make are smaller than gold/silver coins.

S&F

reply to post by lonegurkha


Excellent to have a fellow specialist corroborate the OP.
Makes me want to try a miniscule attempt myself even more..roll on spring.

This Is great. thank you.
I have some ugly forks and knives that have silver in them.
you can get them at junk shops.

a tip for the Acid.
have a bowl of water and a wet rag.
if you do get acid on you then use the water.
and have the bowl so you can put your face in it to wash your eyes and hands.
and USE old cloths!

Great thread, thanks. Is their a way to test for silver or gold without carrying around the acid? There are so many metals that look like gold and silver that I would like to have some simple way to test it before I buy it to recycle the gold or sivler content, if any. I have some items now that are questionable. I would also like the Gold refining thread also.Thanks.

reply to post by tauristercus


This is a really cool thread. Probably one of the coolest things I have read online ever. I am not a big believer in all these conspiracy posts, but I think this information would be extremely valuable if any of these wacky predictions ever did come true.

As for those saying just use the refiners, that is great right now. However, if some of these economic or natural disaster do come true, those refineries would be useless. Hell, they may not even exists.

Thanks for this wonderful post. May or may not try it, but I will have the materials needed on hand and the info how to do it, just in case!

Great thread OP
I am somewhat taken aback by the fact that so many were uunaware of being able to simply search this and other home methods of refining.....
Its a good thing somebody brought it up....lots of good silver gold platinum, even other more rare one too to be had in refining electronics jewlry etc....
Anything thats plated will come off the same way....When one recovers thsi way its recovery of the near pure metal after reconstituting it....
There is some danger involved with using the royal solution and i am wondering if you just use a hot nitric bath for gold or what\?
would that work?
Mixing the two acids etc gets a little more precision oriented and though simple enough involves calculating weights etc....
And not pouring the wrong one into the other....!
Im hoping for some easier way....

Great thread! Very interesting, Thank you for sharing. My girlfriend (wife,really) recently had her uncle pass, and her mom and mimi were his only immediate family. Along with hoarding anything and everything throughout his life, he collected coins. Not particularly special, just a variety of coins. The bank would even call him every couple weeks to come buy coins.

Turns out, we estimate that he had 10's of thousands worth in ordinary coins. If they would like, I may attempt to research and sort through the ones containing the most silver and do this process. Anyway, thought I would share. Thanks again for the thread.

Can I just go on record to say that this is my thread of the year so far...

It's a fantastic idea and I never realised how easy it is to actually do, which has encouraged me even more with your well-written and cleared photographed instructions. In fact i'm giving it a go one day next week!

Thanks for the thread!

"To recover the silver component, we need to completely dissolve the 2 coins in a 50/50 mixture of nitric acid and water. The amount of nitric acid required will be approximately 17mls mixed with approximately 17 mls of water. Using the plastic pipette, the water is added first followed by the nitric acid."

I would put a safety label at this step to let people know what could happen if they put the acid into that long narrow bottle before the water.

Could be a pretty nasty situation for those not used to using acid.

Otherwise great thread, I learned a lot, S+F.

Thank you for this great post, I did not know this was so easy.
I'm going to hopefully do this in the next couple weeks as its a
great idea for future money, and it looks quite fun and time wasting
if bored.

So thank you again

Star & Flag!

I probably wouldn't do this but having the knowledge to do so is a plus.

Thanks.

Great procedure, the combination of photos and text is perfect.

The US Gov sells old electronic equipment by the pound at auction and they told me that it is melted down to reclaim the precious metals. Maybe a similar process?

Super job.

K

reply to post by tauristercus


That was absolutely fascinating.....

I especially liked the part about the potato

S+F

this is definitely something i have been curious about for awhile. thank you for putting this is up and it would be greatly appreciated if you would put the gold refining process on here as well.

Originally posted by RussianScientists
You have a good thread, but you sure aren't improving anything, and your not saving any money, and your not making any extra money by what you are doing.

The value that you can get for the silver in the coins without doing all that work is worth just as much or more in their original form of coins, even if they are foriegn coins. Some refineries will pay you 95 percent of what any gold or silver item you have is worth for the gold or silver value; so... your waisting time doing all that other work. Just because you refined it yourself doesn't mean its worth more than what the coins were worth in their original condition. Let the refinery do all the work for free, and they will still pay you 95% of its true value.

I would like to know just what refineries would pay you 95% the value of the raw metal with no charge for the assay or refining. Having worked in a precious metals refinery(see above post) I can tell you that this is baloney. Just like any other company they want to make a profit, and better than 5%.

The only time that this would possibly happen is if you had a permanent account with the refiner and used their services on a regular basis. Even then you would have to turn in much more metal than you used in whatever process that you ran.