Refining Sterling Silver

J

JoryLeBlanc

New Member
I am new to the silver stacking community but already love it as a hobby and investment (long term). I have bought my first silver bullion pieces and now am looking into refining silver and casting it myself into bars to add to my collection. I have about 10oz of sterling silver. My questions are: is there a way to refine silver without using nitric acid? Is silver lost during the refining stage and if so, how much? What would the .999 silver yield be from 10oz of Sterling silver roughly? Is the process of refining with nitric acid very dangerous or will simple precautions be sufficient? Thanks guys! Also any advise, tidbits of info, or anything at all about silver is very much welcome!
J. LeBlanc
South Side Silversmithing, Inc
 
Sell your sterling and use the money to buy pure silver.

There are quite a few ways of refining silver, some use sulphuric acid, but all require time, equipment, chemicals and a bit of expertise. If all goes well then you just follow the instructions, but if your chemicals are contaminated or your concentrations/timing/temp is off then you end up with no silver and a funny coloured liquid that you have no idea what to do with. If you are a chemist then by all means have a go.

"Cody's Lab" is a good Youtube channel where he refines various metals.

That should get your silver to around 95%+ depending on what other metals are in, probably higher but not bad.

You might want to further refine your silver by running it through some electric plating technique but you need a plating bath and solution for that, more expense and a whole other set of skills.

There is a forum for that https://www.goldrefiningforum.com/ and they are very good at answering questions and giving their advice, which is mostly, "Don't bother"

After that you might want to pour bars, requiring molds, smelters, fuel and a whole other set of skills and safety hazards.

You will lose silver in every stage.

Once you have poured your bar you now have to convince everyone that it is in fact silver because it will have no maker marks on it.

I only know all this because I also wanted to do the same thing. I have 23kg of 50% silver. It wasn't worth the expense, time or effort for me to go through it all, fun though it sounds.
 
Jislizard said:
Once you have poured your bar you now have to convince everyone that it is in fact silver because it will have no maker marks on it.
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good advice. i refined some scrap once. you have to be able to aquire the scrap for next to nothing to be able to make any profit because after pouring your refined bars you have to sell at around 90% of spot before they move.
 
I was getting 50% pre dec below spot value, it was dirty, bent, worn, common date rubbish that dealers just accumulated and wanted shot of. You can probably still pick it up close t spot.

Some members have poured interesting bars, swirls, odd shapes etc. and they can go for a decent amount of money to collectors.

There is money to be made if you are willing to put in all the effort, I am sure one day I will get around to it!
 
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