Midnight Silver Pours

miniroo

miniroo

Well-Known Member
Silver Stacker
First go at pouring 999 silver.

I can't pour for s**t
I need a smaller crucible so I can guide the silver better, it was hard but I did end up with 9 decent buttons.

Was fun pouring over & over, it's the good thing about making mistakes, you can just drop the silver back in and melt again.

Any tips?

 
You are doing quite well, a couple of small tips. If your start with large stock and you want to do small pours, melt your bar as you have done, pour directly into a large stainless pot, something with at least 30 cm depth minimum filled with water with a Good lot of ice to pour the metal onto floating at the top, this will make shot silver. Do not over fill or your metal will hit the ice and splatter everywhere, do not just pour in one spot, you need to constantly move the crucible while pouring and keep a steady flow. Be extremely careful. DO NOT DROP YOUR CRUCIBLE or allow any water to splash on the crucible it WILL EXPLODE. Weigh out your shot into small plastic cups at the pre determined weight you want your finished product. Use your mapp torch and a small fused silica melt dish and holder with a pre prepared borax lining, No further borax is needed or should be added to the melt. It allows better dexterity and control on small pours and is less dangerous than handling a large crucible to do small pours, keep your torch flame on the poured metal after pouring to keep a reducing atmosphere as the metal cools then withdraw. Try to use a torch flame with a reducing flame mode, silver has a huge affinity to absorb oxygen in a molten state, this will minimise the bubbling on the back of your bars, some irregularity is unavoidable. Biggest tip I can give you is SAFETY I cannot stress this enough and bear no responsibility for your actions utilising or attempting any advice I have shared. Love your work, play safe
 
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Thanks Miniroo, I love your videos. I'm thinking of making a 4" to 5" drink coaster from scrap sterling, using an old jam tin as a mould. Is there any chance this will work?
 
Not really sure if a tin can would work well, might buckle and give you a bumpy coaster but worth a try.

Yeah shot is handy when you want to be close to a specific weight, like melting a 1oz coin into a 1oz bar will always be a little short, so you need a little blob to make up the difference.
In my case I have moulds that I require exact weight to form the shape so i'll do a silver shot session to get some stock.

I think rather then ice, just water but very deep, when the molten silver touches the ice or the surface it flattens and then cools like that, so I think if it has further to fall, like a drum of water, it should form balls.
 
yep, for sure just water(deeper) will be fine, but if you are pouring substantial amounts(15-20 oz and up) the water will warm and if the reservoir is not deep enough it will go globby instead of bead or cornflake, the ice does make better and finer shot if used but its not essential.
If you only use a glazed dish for melts with shot and a minimum glaze on the dish your poured amount should be nearly always be the same as your measured amount. The only time I have experienced differently is from melting cement silver in a dish, you will always lose some in the flux due to Ag crystal particle size. I recover this by putting my dish in my furnace with a few ounces of shot with some extra borax and give it an extensive burn, pour out the metal then clean out the remaining borax with an high pressure flame from a torch and re process that. Some favour doing the same but using sodium carbonate instead due to its fluidity, it is reported to clean out melt dishes very easily, and sodium carbonate flux is water soluble leaving your metal for an easy clean up instead of dolly/dilute sulphuric to recover from borax flux. I have not used the sodium carbonate method, my highly respected peers put me onto it but it is reportedly an aggressive flux. I have just made my sodium carbonate and when I have some time off I will try this next week on a fused silica dish and crucible. Anything that makes my clean up easier is more than welcome at no more cost than boiled water.

Goldeneye, get yourself a small amount of casting sand or if you are into diy make your own(see youtube) and press yourself a simple mold but make sure its level of course, I started with sand casting 20 years ago then moved into investment casting, I made some great solid ingots in casting sand from StgAg pocket watch that I found outback prospecting, I removed the knob winder thingy from the top first and soldered that to the finished ingot to keep some providence and the hallmark, drilled a hole through and handmade a bale for a chain to go through. Real piece of rugged jewellery, the sand finish that the casting leaves gives a nice finish, I bevelled the edges and gave it a polish. Don't have it anymore, it also happened to fall subject to the desires of my first forays into refining silver.
 
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