I'd love to see you process that copper out of the waste and melt it into a reusable bar of copper to drop the silver again. I think that would be an interesting video.
Surface area matters if you re-use it to cement out silver. He's using copper strips for that reason. A bar would have to be flattened out. Copper shots would be ok, I guess. Then again, I seriously doubt that it's worth the effort
Used your Ebay "Sreetips" site once again, to buy my wife an anniversary goodie. Always good buys sold with precision jewelers care. Thank you! PS: Looks like you need to set up a second silver cell, or one with enlarged capacity. Always great vids!
Have you ever considered recovering the cemented copper from your waste bucket to make a big bar that could be used for future silver cementing? I'd be very interested to see how that is done. I know the copper isn't very valuable, but as a recycling tool it would be interesting.
I wonder what would happen if you used a copper powder to try to cement out the silver? Would it just cake up and coat the copper causing it to stop the reaction? Or would the reaction be more effective due to it being greater surface area?
Yep, could you imagine though some helpful idiot coming in to straighten up a bit and disposing of said bucket thinking it was trash! It’s a Horrible thought that just popped in my head.
Sreetips, I suggest you look in to securing a Devil Forge. They have a range of forge sizes. You can see them in use by checking out Big Stack D on RU-vid. Patrons may be able to assist with funding.
Sreetips, try your contaminated cement and put it on your eBay store. Offer it as 1.5 times the spot price of bare bright copper, priority shipping. I'd buy 5 to ten pounds at that price. My scrapyard loves copper ingots. Watch pounds of copper fly out of your store.
I don’t have time to process the precious metals that I have. How can I justify working on copper for a few bucks a pound when I’ve got metals worth thousands per pound waiting for my attention.
@@sreetips you already “process” the copper when you go through your waste inerting procedure. Tossing the copper in the trash is really adding to the pollution stream. A quick rinse, air dry, bagged and ready to ship, will net you a few bucks. Yes, it seems like chasing pennies. But it is for me a better way to get copper that I need to alloy with silver and gold than buying copper wire (which is five 9s fine). And it will make many of your fans happy!
I have a couple of questions? Where do you get your nitric acid from. I normally order it off of amazon and wondered if you had a better source? Second I'm looking for a vacuum pump for the Buckner funnel flask. Any recommendations shipmate? Sincerely HM Gardner
I have a dumb question. Around 17:35, we can notice fumes from the bucket containing your cemented silver. What could be the composition in these fumes?
Hey sreetips maybe its worth taking the waste copper nitrate and putting it in a bucket and add Hydrochloric acid to precipitate the remaining silver as silver chloride im confident it will work as I've started refining myself and I used copper to precipitate silver and I put the waste solution in a bucket and added my gold refining waste and silver chloride precipitate out
Such a shame all these chemicals can’t be bought in the UK without a licence. Still trying to track down alternatives to do the same thing that I can buy legally! Have loads of silver to refine but no ability to do it :(. Not sure if it’s something you’d do but would be great to do a video for those outside of the USA with a tutorial for refining with available chemicals (appreciate it might not be feasible but worth an ask!)
I am a big fan You did a video on hdd disks some time ago and I was wondering Is there any precious metals in CDs or DVDs if so how would one refine it out
You ever think of getting a Devil Forge furnace? I think you could melt around 5 kilos of metal in about 15 minutes in one. I was thinking about getting one for myself but I don't melt metal that often.
Hey streetips. What do you do with your cement copper? You should sent it to a melt & cast RU-vidr. It would be a really cool way to grow both your channels.
@@sreetips i see. understandable. well, keep it in the back of your mind. i spend an embarrassing amount of time watching dudes melt metal. it would be cool to see your pure copper on one of their channels!
The powder isn’t pure it contains other precious metals in the platinum family which is why he runs it through a silver cell to turn it into silver crystals which is generally 999 pure high quality silver.
Think you would have the capabilities to make a extra large version of your electro refining silver cell? Like instead of using a stainless bowl you use a stainless steel pot? I'm just picturing how cool a full pot of silver crystals would look.
As a kid I thought of science like modern day magic and was intrigued. If you would like some help I would love the experience. Even if just making shot.
when you run the cement silver through the silver cell, is the yield ratio mostly 1:1 or is there enough of the pgm's to make a noticable difference in the final weight? so like would a kilo going in be basically a kilo coming out as pure crystal? if it's not, it'd be interesting to see how much difference there is so you can get an idea of the ratio of pgm's to silver you tend to get.
The PGMs as just traces. They build up in the filter of the silver cell as slimes. Also, the silver nitrate in the electrolyte becomes depleted of silver as the cell operates. It gets plated out as pure silver crystal.
Yes, but it would happen ever so slowly. After I boiled the pieces of sterling and allowed it to cool, a fine black discoloration began forming on the pieces of sterling. I believe that it was palladium cementing out on the sterling silver.
Dears, may I ask you, do you know why the ceramic processor in USA / South Africa is so cheap than Asia? Do you thinks is it scammer? Kindly inform if you know, thank you very much
I am really curious if you have built up any substantial amount for Rh in your paper wastes or slimes... Will you ever try to figure out a way to refine it?
@@sreetips Learn something everyday watching your videos and reading the comments, had to Look up what Rh was lol, Rhodium spot price is over $13k per ounce, so maybe figuring out how to recover it might be another avenue for your store - never knew they use it to plate silver to prevent tarnish :-) Thanks for another great video.
I have zero experience with copper. I bought a 75 foot roll of copper tubing Oct 2019 for $65 and I’ve used about 2/3 of it. Along about Feb or March of next year I’ll get some more. Copper is cheap and plentiful. I’ve even gotten used copper wire for free. I can’t justify spending time working on copper from my waste treatment bucket. It’s nearly worthless
Some of it does plate out. Not sure of the amount. The electrolyte gets depleted as the cell operates - it plated out as pure silver crystal. I once used the same electrolyte three refinings and it was so depleted that only a tiny amount of silver was recovered from it - almost nothing.
I think your logic is flawed at around 1 minute. You are still going to have to put the same amount of copper in to cemet out all the silver because you are going to need 1 copper atom for every silver ntirate OR plain nitric acid molecule. If you add more silver then you are just turning the excess nitric acid into silver nitrate. But you needed 1 copper atom for either.
I refine silver too. The 1st in silver refining is to dissolve in nitric. So I add silver to make use of any excess nitric that may be present. Efficiency.
@sreetips all the angle iron I find isn't iron but rolled steel at Lowe's and Home Depot. Is there a type you use that is just iron as in wrought iron or will the steel angle Iron work alright?
What do you do with the copper that gets cemented out? I understand that it doesn't have the value that silver does, but it does still have value. you can reuse it to cement the silver. Cutting some cost of the copper ribbon you buy
@@bygdaddy6143 Yeah, that could slow down the process some. I did see someone doing it with a strainer (stainless maybe?) that held the copper at the the top of the container and it had a stir bar in so the silver was just continually rinsed off.
Im sorry to say that I don’t have the time to spend on refining the copper. It is plentiful and cheap. I can’t keep up with the gold and silver that I have to process. Copper, at just a few dollars per pound, can’t compete with gold and silver at thousands per pound. Tens of thousands per pound! Plus the copper in that waste bucket is heavily contaminated with other metals
You make this look way too easy. I am about $4K invested in my lab and managed to take sterling silver and turn it into 90%. I know b/c not included in my lab is a $16K Bruker XRF spectrometer. Needless to say I would gladly pay for a phone consultation. Gold was good... 99% but 10% loss by weight. But I do know where it is... it's in the nitric acid. (Just don't know why). Used copper bus bar to precipitate the silver, and low and behold, the silver is 9% copper... guess I should have paid better attention to the rinsing. Again if you offer consulting maybe reach out to me. I also learned to leave the copper in overnight. Liquid went from green to blue, and testing showed all the silver had precipitated.
Oh... and I know why you have the corning ware under the beakers. I picked up my beaker full of cement silver and the dang thing broke... lesson learned. But not near as bad as the time I dropped a crucible with 3 oz of gold in my garage.
It’s not high purity. The cement silver is only about 99% or 990 parts per thousand. Industry standard for pure silver is three nines or 99.9% or 999 parts per thousand. While cement silver can come very close to three nines, the only way to be sure is to run it through the electrolytic silver cell.
@street tips sir. I just had the happen to me put copper last night came today around 5 and I have a green solution with no copper can I just add more copper to recover silver again ?
@@sreetips I believe my solution had a lot of nitric gonna add more sterling hopefully I can recover it one other thing I accidentally put aqua regia in the silver nitric and in half of second I had a reaction causing like white milky substance do you have an idea why it could be ?
@@hahaalall9634 hydrochloric acid reacts with the silver nitrate to instantly for silver chloride. You want to keep HCl away from silver nitrate solutions. You can filter it out and save it before adding more silver. Excess nitric sounds right.
@@sreetips thanks I gambled a lot I put all my money on you it worked out I had 110grams of 13.5k and recover 59.5 of the .9999 of 24k and I hope I can recover some silver thanks any time you come to San Diego ca and want a tour around the jewelry district let me know I can show you around
@@sreetips Thank you for replying to my post Sreetips! Seems like 99% is quite high. Monetarily anyway! I know your all about quality not quantity but all the effort involving the electrolysis to get that last .9% doesn't seem to be cost effective. I know I'm missing the mark here just musing. Your videos are very interesting as is your patient calm demeanor. Looking forward to the next video! Thanks
Someone has to say it - it's gone stale dude. Sorry. Need to move on to new stuff. You got a Lot of options for new material. I'd be happy to help with new ideas, as will your amazing viewers, if you just ask 'em.
kind of do not agree....sreetips has so many processes all of these videos (no matter the length) give a glimpse into how he manages the different steps of them all. He could probably use a little sorting of his vids possibly into playlists of the different types of metals, going into or out of solution, working with the different acids, etc. especially to organize the series videos, but that takes time too. I'm waiting for the birth of his furnace. Like a mini Bigstackd with his Devil's forge. =b
