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

Originally posted by hawkiye
Great thread and thanks for posting it! Some questions. What if the silver is mixed with other metals beside just copper will the same procedure work? Also what about circuit boards is it worth the trouble and will the non metallic parts of the board be a problem or is that a whole different procedure?

Look forward to your tutorial in refining Gold.

Computer boards are not worth it in small amounts but back when i was mining we use to run computer board through the mill along with the gold ore and use it to improve the grade of low grade ores.
Computer boards are soft compared to the quartz that gold is found in and we ground up both to around salt size and ran it across a jig table and then took the concentrate and ground it to flour size with a small amount of mercury to collect the gold and silver.

Computer boards run about a ounce of gold per ton except for boards like old IBM mainframe boards that may run 2 to 3 ounces per ton gold and there is a good silver content and a small amount of platinum in some.

reply to post by tauristercus


Thank you for this information, tauristercus.
You are a wonderful person to present this information so everyone who's interested can learn how to do this.

My best to you and yours.

reply to post by tauristercus


I love silver jewellery and often buy some cheap bits I come across despite never wearing them. I just love silver so much compared with gold. I have often wanted to find a way to make a bit of cash from dealing with re selling silver but had no idea how to make it worth my while, but this is very interesting. In fact I am going to give it a go I think with a friend of mine who might be interested.

Maybe it won't be super lucrative, but I do like the idea of finding cheap silver metals and refining it into pure silver. Maybe that's just me being a bit sad, but I actually think it's really cool!

Thank you for this post, I can't believe how simple it is to do as well. It's super cool that you have taken the time to show us all step by step with photo's as well

how about getting that copper out of the blue liquid?
copper is a very useful metal, and also has market value.

found a document on how to get from copper-nitrate to copper
www.msu.edu...

it does require using aluminum, and some other chemicals,
though considering aluminum foil is cheaper than copper, it's worth it.

reply to post by lowki


I just finished reading the link you posted. Yes this will work, however the cost of materials and the value of your time involved in this process, taken along with the value of copper, makes it financially unviable. It costs more to implement than you can get for the copper you produce. If done on a large basis with cost offset by needing the required chemicals for other processes, then you may be able to make it viable, but on the scale represented by this OP then you will be wasting money for no return.

This link sounds like a chemistry class experiment.

reply to post by tauristercus


Sorry but your application fails miserably. What do you accomplish by removing the junk from junk silver coins? You will not get the melt value for your silver beads. You have wasted your time and won't gain anything back for all the time it took you.

You would also need a helluva lot more nitric acid to effectively obatin any silver from the most common sterling forks/or plated forks.

I'm with you 100 percent on silver extraction and investment. But you should at least be forthcoming about the time it takes to do what you have done. Your taking the junk out of junk silver coins but nobody is going to know the absolute purity of your metal unless you pay to have it tested, so your efforts have almost been wasted.

Sorry to be a downer.

This information is utterly brilliant,with easy to follow instruction,I think i am going to start making my own bullion
thank you OP

Cran

Incredible. Thread's like this are what brought me to ATS, thank god, a silver flower amongst the thorns of channelling ET and the constant threat of earthquakes.

I will definitely be trying this.

I must be the lone dissenter here...

You can't simply go to your lab store and purchase nitric acid. The restrictions have increased. You must apply for a permit and state that the purpose is for metal extraction.

I fully understand the value of precious metals but your idea is so flawed it's making me sick. Junk silver can be cashed in for melt value much more efficiently than using acid to extract it. Not to mention exposing the toxins to the community.

If you've got loads of junk silver coins, keep them, it's far less toxic and when the time demands the sale go for it. Also some coins are worth more for collector value than the actual junk silver weight...of course this depends on condition.

A carson city silver dollar can be worth more than it's melt value if it is in pristine properly graded condition.

This would not be very practical as another user pointed out. Even if you collected enough "buttons" to make a 10 or 100 ounce bar, you would have a hard time selling in this form and would most certainly have to send off to a refinery which would take a hefty 10-20% cut. Add in cost of acid and coins to get that much product would leave you in the red. I would buy junk coins before I buy homemade buttons because I would know the content and by weight would still be worth the same. Maybe I am missing something but I just don't see the point in the added expenses. Silver dollar (26grams)= $26. Now pay $26 for a silver dollar, $2 portion of acid, $5 refining fees, leaves you spending $33 for the same amount of silver. Just keep the coins.

I cannot reiterate this enough. DO NO TRY THIS.

I do silversmithing.

Firstly, Silver is fine, but gold requires a licence to do anything with, technically you are breaking the law.
Nitric acid is very dangerous, when handling we use gloves, masks, aprons and a fume cupboard.
If you do it wrong the silver will be lost in the liquid and never recovered, it also will be slightly contaminated with any impurities i your method or the silver.

The easiest way to purify silver is to understand its melting point and the melting point of impurities added to the silver.

Buy yourself a crucible for £3 and use an acetylene torch.


Silver is around £22-24 on the ounce for 999/1000 quality, buy yourself a sand casting kit or an ingot casting jig and have some fun making your own bars.

Don't play with nitric acid, it burns and will continue to burn.

On Friday I saw it eat through 3mm mild steel within 2 hours and that was a 1:3 ratio to water.

reply to post by tauristercus


Please provide 24K gold refining guide PLEASE!!!!! That would be awesome...Thanks

wow thanks man, very informative. though the most suprising part to me was the potato working as a crucible. amazing .and how copper 'transmutes' pretty much to silver. thank u again

reply to post by tauristercus


Dude, you need to spend time on things that are more productive I think. That is quite the mouse trap in putting allot of time and effort into something that will yield minimal results.

Amazing thread tauristercus, and sounds like a lot of fun if you managed to source the right materials.

Just a two questions

*** What if your silver is mixed with something other than copper? What if it is mixed with a variety of different metals such as lead or nickel; would you need a variety of different metals to add to the solution in order to reclaim the silver?

***Where would you get the best price if you finally wanted to sell your silver?

Can't wait for your gold thread. S&F.

AWESOME! JUST AWESOME!!!!

I am definately going to be trying this at home soon!

Would be very interested in seeing your gold tutorial!

Keep up the good smelting!!!

Wow

I don't know if I will ever use this but it was good to know this. Stars on all post!

Fantastic! Thank you very much for this. I've got a pile of silver slag recovered from old photo developing equipment, and I've been wondering what to do with it. Not only can I process it now, but I'll also have some high quality silver to make some monoatomic silver drink to stave off infections.

Fantastic thread S&F, Just a quick question about melting old silver coins?

How does one find out the make up of the coin? I mean if the base metal used to combine with the silver is not copper then how does that change the process?

Originally posted by TiM3LoRd
Fantastic thread S&F, Just a quick question about melting old silver coins?

How does one find out the make up of the coin? I mean if the base metal used to combine with the silver is not copper then how does that change the process?

I've found that the simplest way is to Google the coin.
You should easily find an entry that tells you what metals & percentages the coin is made from.