Seriously great video. It always shocks me to see how much you get outta your melts. You said that you got about 1/3 of that melted and that ends up to be somewhere around 5pounds of silver 😱 whoa! It is always mind blowing and at the same time super satisfying to watch, I hope you keep on keeping on and you continue to share your work with us. I absolute love it 😀 😍
I love watching your videos. I dont plan on doing what you do at all but i enjoy learning and you do a great job teaching. I like to watch your videos when im putting my one year old to sleep for the night. After a half hour he is hout and i get to watch your videos in relative peace. thank you sir for the content i truly enjoy it. Keep up the good work
That furnace is great in so many ways! One of the best is probably that it affords you more time to work with the gold refining. Have a Great Day My Friend!
Yesterday I checked to see if you posted any videos lately. I'm looking forward in watching you process the anode baskets. I agree it's nerve racking when melting silver. Especially when adding the dry to what's already molten. I'm always waiting for some kind of puff.
Another video from my favorite channel! Only thing I would have done differently with that furnace is enhance the efficiency. I would use a good boiler refractory cement or rigidizer on the insulation. This would provide better efficiency and safety(air born fibers). A hinged lid wouldn't be bad either but it seems to be melting just fine the way it is. Thanks for another good video!
I have found that you truly don’t know what “hot” is until you stand over a furnace running full blast and see a material that is normally solid turn to liquid. When I run mine, I joke that I am making a puddle.
Small amounts - no problem. But I melted over 10 pounds of metal in just three charges. That much molten metal scares me - but it’s a healthy fear to have.
Wow, your silver process has gotten bigger. The next video will be Sreetips in a crane holding a large industrial bucket pouring the silver in a large pool of water.
Great melt! I also like how clean you want your metal. Gotta upgrade your cell now that you upgraded HOW you melt your cement to shot. Gotta be a larger scale Cell that could be created to handle atleast 2xs your current production. Great Video.
First that is a foundry not a furnace a furnace is for smelting and a foundry is for melting second you may want to position your nozzle further back so its not sitting in the foundry so much and maybe pack some more wool around it so there is not a gap because it may help with the nozzle overheating third getting a metal plate and attaching the wool lid to will help with putting it on or even just some metal rods so it does not misalign or get your hands too close to the heat.
awsome to see another upload but please be careful about your back get a second pair of tools of the pour so you can get good grip and a nice stand when doing your pours. sorry english isnt my native launge but the "grips" / "tongs" you use is perfekt for the transport out and around with the crucibal. but forced to have max load at the end + pour the hot metal against you is not a good idea . thats why you want one so you can pour from the side (ergonomic we are not getting younger ;) ) safer. Sorry for the wall of text
That cement silver shot creation process you use definitely requires extreme care given the dire consequences of a mistake. It's good that your a bit concerned about it - you want to be at the top of your game doing that.
heya steetips! you need to put something on your kao wool lining in your melter/smelter to keep fibers from becoming airborne. you need to put a hardener on it!
@sreetips I would love to buy an Ounce or 2 of your Larger Chunk Silver Shot you just poured there / Especially the ones with the Gold Toning / Very Cool / Any chance you might put Some up on Ebay ?
This is a great video man keep doing stuff like this it’s really interesting and cool to see the whole process and I appreciate Are you taking the time to show the rest of us how that stuff works. Great videos, keep it up
Great video once again. I had an observation and it got me thinking. You can see the slag on top of the molten silver. I'm curious if that was impurities or pgms that were half melted. It makes you think if those were pgms on the surface, you could skim those off of there to process separately and your silver shot would be that much purer before it goes into the silver cell. Either way, looking forward to another video.
Just a suggestion. You might want to purchase one of the Devil Forge Furnaces, I think your melt times would be faster, and... safer than the converted stock-pot furnace you currently have. The Devil Force Furnaces I think would be worth your time for the silver melts. Not so sure about the gold, as you seem not to be processing large amounts of gold. Just a thought...
Have you considered adding a funnel feeder to the furnace? By suspending a steel pipe over the crucible with a flared top you could quickly feed material through the hole in the lid. With the right stand you could quickly move the feeder into place and dump a few scoops in the top and then remove the feeder again.
Screetips you really need a better setup for transfering the silver powder into the crucible. Something like a big metal funnel. Everytime you spill something my heart bleeds.
@@sreetips *Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but folks with $30,000 hotrods and 5 gallon buckets filled with precious metals aren't 'flat broke'.*
I’ve used the same bowls for many years. I added some cement silver powder to the anode basket and it went south from there. Clogged the filter and amps dropped off, slow crystal growth
Great video Senior Chief. Those lifting tongs are awesome, but you might want to get your fabricator to make a pouring holder to go with it. Will make pouring much easier and more comfortable as well. Keep the videos coming!
@@sreetips If you watch the channel mbmmllc (Mt Baker mining and metals, here in Wash state) he does a lot with small crucibles and has some really cool tongs and handles. The "smelting silver ore & refining" video from 25 July has some good shots of what he uses.
Suggestion... before starting the melt, weigh out 1 lb batches of the silver powder into bags (maybe ziplock type) then just drop the bags into the crucible bag and all. No scooping powder outside and spilling into the furnace and your hand won't get so cooked.
Yeah you need to get together with a black smith to make a bottom and top ring and Handel's for the crucible so you can have more control on the poorest maybe make a permanent smelt would be awesome. Great content they should be teaching this in schools it is great knowledge
Did you washed all your silver shots with distilled water in extenso? If not, theres your silver cristal discolouration... silver chloride. If washed with aqua dest extensively, then I have no idea, but still suspect AgCl. HCl vapours reaching the cell or so...
@@sreetips Awesoem!! Thank you 👍🏼 Major fan FYI. I’ve purified now 15oz of pure silver from scrap just from watching your videos. Keep up the great work.
Great to see you back! Now you need to get yourself a cupellation furnace for those rare times you get solids or oxides of base metals with PMs bound up in them. Bone ash cupels have been found in the tombs of Egyptian Pharos. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
@@sreetips It's simply another method. You get a PM bead faster but then have to chemically strip each PM from the flattened bead. Thank you for another fascinating video!
So silver cement looks like dry concrete powder minus the gravel, and dry gold powder looks like high clay content dirt. Does customs enforcement know about this?
Hey bud.. will cooling the silver melt in chlorinated water create chlorine gasses? I am sure it would be very low levels. Also... could the process be the "mystery" contamination in your silver cell?
Does refining the silver crystal back through the silver cell go faster the second time around? Or does that exchange occur at a "steady" pace regardless of the purity? Thank you for sharing all this. freaking science, man...exciting stuff!
It's funny you mention that cartoon about the guy with the rain cloud followin' him. I think it was Ziggy, but I may be wrong. I have some construction I'm doin' at my house as time allows. I had some time and material the other day, so I break out the tools and get all set up. And it starts to rain. Hard. Like, thunderstorm hard. _BUT ONLY AT MY HOUSE._ I shit you not it wasn't raining just next door. The neighbor's driveway was dry and I have photos to prove it. I've never seen anything like it in my life.
It's remarkable that palladium etc. Is found in the old silverware you dissolve. You'd think the original refiner had removed all traces of it. Or is it a matter of antique silverware refined in a time where absolute purity wasn't so much of an issue and the price of recovering the pmg would outweigh the value of the recovered material? And now with palladium etc. Skyrocketing, it becomes more of an issue?
Question for you regarding cementing out the cement silver - If I understand the process correctly, the copper is trading places with the silver as it comes out of solution and forms the cement silver. Any impurities on the copper would "fall" into the cement silver and then become one further impurity to filter out during the silver cell process - showing up in the slimes. Do you think it would be worth your time to attempt to clean the copper before the cementing process to remove as much of the impurities as you can? Perhaps a chemical cleaning or even just heating it to redness before use? I'm thinking that it may reduce the amount of contamination in your slimes and extend the life of your filters.
I wonder if a "silver on tap" mechanism could be implemented, for fun, or maybe for profit. For continuous melting, the bottom of the melting pot could have a tap which could be opened to let the molten silver out right into the water barrel without the need to stop the heat. I'm not sure, if such a tap exists or what material could it be to withstand the melting temperature, and not get stuck. The advantage would be increased productivity and energy efficiency. The disadvantage is the added complexity and possible disaster if the apparatus goes wrong.
For doing melts that size you could probably get away with ordering an alumina liner burying it on charcoal and running a few blowers through it. The liner is like 80$ and if you treat it well should be good for a few melts.
hey, been following you for years man, since the no sound videos. you look like you need to upgrade your silver cell. if 5lbs would take you months, the 5 gal bucket will take your couple years. thats only if you don't produce more cement silver. sounds like a possible new adventure for you. what do you think??
Please be safe, full leathers & boots are a must. Take care in keeping the crucible away from the water, crucibles can & do break during pours. We like you & Mrs Sree, the Sree fam, friends & your youtube fans want you safe as possible.
@@sreetips I dislike nitpicking other people's work & I appreciate your videos. I have seen a metal pouring go wrong once, although nobody was hurt the other guy & myself came way too close to disaster. Fwiw, I saw you had drilled a melting dish once to pour shot & had limited success. Perhaps the holes were too large & the 5 gallon bucket was too shallow to sufficiently cool/solidify the shot before hitting the bottom of the smaller bucket. It may be worth experimenting with drilling smaller holes (1/16") in the cup of a steel ladle & pour the molton silver through that into the larger 33 gallon barrel while using a water pump to keep the water circulating. Maybe even rig a piece of 2" angle iron to use as a channel for the molten silver to avoid holding the hot crucible above the water. Also, since you are up to your armpits in cement silver I'd like to see id you might entertain experimenting with pouring anode plates of impure silver & try them in a larger secondary silver cell. I have wondered if using a porous barrier (like terracotta or an r/o membrane) might help to keep the crystals from shorting the cell out. Would a device (maybe a pump or glass bar on an actuator) could agitate the electrolyte periodically to help knock the growing crystals down? Thanks, Sree - I do appreciate all you do, the videos & your passion.
Hey bud have you tried any of the paste glazes for your melting pots to be able make a shot pouring pot , by drilling a few 1/8in. Holes in the side of you melt pot for dripping vents
❤. What is the purity of cement silver? Estimate is ok. ❤ Have you ever poured a bar of cement silver? ❤. Can you put cement silver directly into a silver Cel? Thank you
HEY HEY this is the first time I've been here this fast in a long time! I miss ya sreetips im here for this though, let's go! Its going to be an awesome video im sure 👍
long-time viewer. love the videos. have you thought about making a video of trying to refine/retrieving/reusing your nitric acid in your silver refining process?
Curious what the outcome would be if your were to use a press to compact your cement silver before charging the crucible? Would work for the crystal as well.
Nice one buddy, after melting metals myself and through watching other people like bigstackd and ArtByAdrock if you leave some melted metal in the bottom of the crucible it helps with melting the next load of metal even quicker than starting again with an empty crucible thus also saving on gas as well as time, give it a try on your next melt buddy and see how you get on
Yea, there are a few ways he can optimize his operation further. Cupola style furnaces are even better because you can continuously feed material and drain the melt more safely. You basically make a trough on a hinge with a spout and the burner blowing through the top. Since there is no need to open it, or lift any hot melt by hand, it is faster and safer. The spout can pour directly into the water bucket.
@@excitedbox5705 never heard of this one cheers for the info buddy I was just going by his current set up as it's practically the same as what I've got
@@sotkshadow8306 cupolas are usually used for refining ore. Furnaces are used for smelting, such as what he is doing. I have always liked the cupola design though because it allows for safer draining but they used to not make sense at small scale because of their size. Other people use induction furnaces with a spout. You get a box and fill it with refractory and a copper pipe coil and set a crucible with a pour spout in it. Once it hardens you add a stand with a hinge and power (sine wave at high frequency). You run water through the pipe to keep it cool. It works like an induction cooker so it is really really efficient. You can melt a whole crucible full in 30 seconds.