I’ve been saving brazing scraps for years. The plant that I worked at use to throw them away. I’ve got 35lbs saved. It’s all 80.15.5. Now I know what to do with it. Thanks sreetips!!!

Sweet video. I do hvac and use those exact brazing rod every day. Interesting. Take care friend

Whodathunk to recover silver from brazing rods? Sreetips, that's who! Excellent video, the yield was unexpectedly low, but you still have some more rod ends and some silver chloride to process from this batch of rods. You pulled it off nicely, sreetips, a guy could save up the silver solder brazing rod bits, and make a nice silver stash from them. At least they wouldn't have to go into the garbage.

Excellent job sir. I really enjoy your videos as you don't talk to the viewers like we don't know what HCL or a ML is. I will continue following you.

Thanks for the info! Great demo of dropping the silver with lye and sugar.

Thanks for making and posting your video's, I enjoy them all

Mad Scientist, beautiful, thanks for sharing your passion with us.

Sreetips thanks for making the videos you make, they are very informational. You are also very good at explaining what you are doing as well as what is happening during the process. Thanks again for quality content without the bull other channels upload.

I love your teaching! Watch you all the time.

Just wanted to take a second to thank you again for your efforts of making these videos! I’ve learned a lot from you as well as others and really appreciate your time in making these for us. I’ve yet to go refine any silver as the nitric is expensive here in Maine. I’m currently searching for a cost effective way to purchase nitric but until then I’ll keep using poor mans. But thanks again! Stay safe

I love watching your videos and enjoy your format. Have you considered including occasional text over the footage, displaying the formula/equation for the reaction taking place?

great videos, I really enjoy watching! I would really like to see one on nitric acid production.

Gonna call this one the moon round.. Alot of work but came out good in the end 😄 love the info for your videos

Another great teaching video! Thanks Pete!

Thank you for the addition of the thermometer!!!. By the way... I love this channel!!!!

I subbed the first time I found this site, one of my go to's for great info. I have accumulated about 40 lbs of high quality computer gold from older computers well cleaned. My problem is finding nitric acid in gallon containers where I live in western canada. 👍

I very much enjoy these vidoes!

Hey Sreetips, Do you ever look back at these and laugh about the difference in knowledge from now and then (this video). Funny how much we learn over the years.

Hey sreetips!! I've worked with Harris 15 for most of my life. What you might not have picked up is that silver brazing rods have a significant amount of phosphorous added to act as a wetting agent when the silver/copper alloy begins to flow. You can buy brazing rods with different alloys all the way from 45% down to 0% which is called Phos-copper brazing rod. You just did in reverse what I've wanted to do for years and that is make my own brazing rods. haha

Definitely an education. Apparently with a learning curve! LOL Great vid! It appears that you are a bit fascinated by the sugar-cement action. I was intrigued myself when you first did it in the other video. Lotsa nitric this time! But that brazing rod is pretty tough stuff. Not a bad yield. You didn't lose the rest of what was anticipated. It just had a change of address. LOL Thanx again bud!

Wow, thats some resilient stuff

Pretty good mate. Keep going.

Very interesting to see. Don't be surprised that in the evolutions of stock pots you may come up with a new element, lol.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge... Very interesting hobby!

Looked for the various solder mixes. so there can be Zn, Sn and Cd, Si in it! Cd cadmium oh boy....

Thank you for this video, I've wondered about getting silver out of these rods and silver solder. I have been in coin collecting on an amateur level since about 1974 and I started working in maintenance, commercial and then later industrial electrical also periods of general maintenance and whatever else was necessary to pay the bills as long as it was legal and ethical, sorry just rambling.

Those stick blenders are great. I use it to powder my potassium nitrate before mixing it with sugar to make my little rocket motors.

Another excellent video!

thank u for your video about getting valuble ....things like silver...coper...etc from scrap salim

I was thinking that a copper sulfate cell would work better and be more cost effective. Then your silver would be in the anode sludge and wouldn't need to be precipitated , just dried and melted and rerun through your silver cell. I love your videos bro !!! I learned why my copper sulfate cell turned green from the info you gave about your waste bucket. I was using a stainless steel anode basket I made to dissolve the copper away from silver electrical contacts. My basket started to dissolve and I learned just now that was an iron contaminant from the dissolving basket . Thank you sir 😎

Again a nice video with nice explanation ( though you can have only copper nitrate and silver nitrate after solving the welding rods in nitric acid) There is now chlorine to react in that stage of your experiment

I've never had spaghetti take that long to cook.

You do a super job

Deffinately a great video. I think you explained the process well. I would have liked to see the pieces of copper coated angle iron one last time. I'm curious as to how thick the copper accumulated on the iron, and if it was consistent like electroplating would be.

Thanks for this video, I *think* that I can determine a way to apply this profitably: I work in HVAC and am also a beginner hobby refiner. I already seperate/cut my clean copper scrap from the soldered joints when cashing it in because of the superior payout on the clean versus soldered. If I use the silver soldered copper in order to precipitate silver out of nitric (if Im already doing that anyway) then I can seperate the silver from the copper *and* cement the silver out at the same time. Thanks again.

Another great video thanks

Great job and thank you!

Probably electrolytic refining would be the way to go. I'm doing it now. You're my teacher so I respect the fact that you took your time to make this video.

always wondered how you would do this thanks

Great video

You did an amazing job sir! I'd be most interested in learning more. I've purchased probably around 50 pounds of 15% silver soldier and harvest hundreds of pounds of soldered joints.

I work commercial hvac i do a ton of brazing i have been saving my butts for a while i cant wait to cash in

Excellent vídeo :)

Enjoyed!, Thanks

I'm going to suggest you convert the silver chloride to silver metal by drying it, add 1.5 x molar sodium carbonaste< and just melt in graphite crucible. The carbonate/chloride xixture melts at about 800°C and serves very weLL as a flux. No need to make things all sticky with borax. Just melt and pour beautiful metallic silver. Nickel does not interfere, nor does tin oxide. Easy peasy, no need to reduce before melting. Chemical reduction is not only unnecessary but vastly complicates the mechanics. My technique is dissolve, then prepip as chloride, add 1.5x molar amount of anhydrous sodium carbonate, dump in a crucible and melt. then pour off in graphite bar mold.

U r great sir i love your videos pls someday shoot ur fumehood how it works and all thank you sir

Have you thought of using the old hand crank blender to prevent as much splattering of your solution? Of course it might be difficult to find one, I don't know if the still make and sell them, just curious.

You did good job, i'm looking for video of IC chips you did befor

I work now ...see you my friend.. Is great you channel..thankz..is very interesting...very good

This was another instructive and informative video as i have learned to expect from you. Thanks for your work. I watched another man process Silver in a You Tube video...not to refine it to market it... but to make something for which he needed Silver...which I cannot remember...and I did not bookmark the video...ouch. Well after he had precipitated the Silver Oxide from the Silver Chloride solution he just melted the Silver Oxide in order to retrieve his Silver. He did not bother with adding sugar or Karo Syrup. He claimed that the Oxygen combines with the Gas during his melt....which makes sense when considering an efficient use of fuel. Silver Oxide is an Oxidant, I believe. And you are releasing energy when adding the Sugar...perhaps heat which can be added to melt when the excess Oxygen is added to the Gas....and heat is released So what are the downsides, if any, to that process? I think I may try that...unless you have a reason why that you are not to do that. Thanks for your forthcoming answer..

Also, your ventilation system is a great idea

Great videos. You should do a yield/cost comparison between (computer scrap/gold, brazing rods/silver and $20 scratch off cards).

Just caught this video and you have probably already figured it out but... Those silver brazing rods are 5% phosphorus. With nitric acid, that will redox to phosphoric acid, which should not effect what you were doing, but that and some miscelaneous impruities and manufacturing slag, were most likely the "unknown precipitate". I'm a little fuzzy on the subject, but silver nitrate (I) with phosphoric acid, i think will create silver orthophosphate. I'm not exactly sure what that reaction would have had done in your mix, but possibly lowering the yield and leaving some yellowish sludge. In a perfect world (by equation) it takes 4.3ml of azeotropic nitric acid (68ish percent) to dissolve 1gram of copper. At 80% copper in the material, that would have required 1567ml of conc. nitric to get the job done (ouch!). Not to mention the H20 need for solubility. Add in the 82.96ml of nitric needed for dissolving the 15% silver (68.37g) at 1.22ml HNO3 per gram of Ag. The nitric need for copper is why whenever I need to inquart, I much prefer silver to keep the refining costs down (Ag is 28% of the cost of processing Cu). So... my opinion is... two things were battling you (1) a ton of nitric required and (2) possibly some interactions with phosphorus. Maybe a high power chemist could enlighten us further.

With those rods containing 5% phosphorus I'm curious how that would have affected the nitric acid reaction with the copper and silver. Was the copper being pulled by the nitric while the phosphorus reacted to form phosphoric acid and NO2 and then react again with the phosphoric acid to form copper phosphate? Was that the precipitate that was first noticed?

Yessss Nice

Hi my friend... Is excellent your vídeo.. Congratulations for you channel.. You have good day... Yes very good...silver..

Light Blue precipitate is likely tin (IV) oxide, SnO2. Tin is often added to brazing alloys to reduce their flow point and assiust in wetting copper. ASlso be aware that many copper based brazing alloys contain phosphorus, mostly present as copper phosphide.

Good job...bro.... Keep goin at it.... :) :) :)

Is it possible to process this material also by electrolysis? Thank!

Did you build your fume hood? Also, if one were interested in getting into refining sterling silver, what books would you recommend? Thanks.

Hi sir. Is excellent vídeo

The Brazing rods contain Silver, Copper and Phosphorus. Since the silver and copper is soluble, I assume the precipitant you were getting in your beaker was the phosphorus. The Phosphorus is used as a flux while soldering HVAC plumbing.

I did an experiment with dilute nitric acid...litle different reaktion produces Nitrogenmonoxide intead of Nitrogendioxide.

maybe those rods are 10% silver and you got it all .......GOOD Job

I suck at chemistry but I am curious if its possible to also recover the copper and other metals in the rod that dissolved into solution?

You might be having issues with the silicon or the bronze. I have probably 10 lbs of 65% high purity rod like that. I didn't know if it was worth messing around with.

Love your videos, would cutting the rods up into smaller pieces help the process? I am not able to get hold of the chemicals you use in some of your videos, so watching your videos that use household chemicals is really interesting.

enjoyed the video, but why didn't you cut the rods so they would be totally submerged from the get go?

u should also do a time wrap up of the entire process on ur videos to give viewers time frames of each step and how long it takes as a whole would like to see in total how long things like this take to do and how dedicated u are to ur craft

Thanks again for another fantastic video. Could it have been easier to dissolve if the brazen rods were melted down first? I am not knowledgeable on the subject of welding but that was my first thought.

If you have a problem with some gold mixed up in silver solider can you do this same process and leave gold behind

Actually when I was like 14 years old, I grabbed one of the rolls of silver solder and melted it down into like a pluck and then had my mother look at it. Well as it turned out, I told my mother that I found the metal. So she had someone look at it, and sure enough, it was silver and the person purchased the pluck from me giving me $10.00.

If you have braze wire that has been melted down into globs, ours is bAG 24 so 50% silver if you made it into pellets would you be able to use the silver cell to extract more silver than using the dilute nitric acid solution?

I knew there was silver to be had in solder :) Of course it's not just any kind of solder you used in this case... but I'm sure other kinds of solder contain at the very least traces of silver as well. That being said, were you aware that some older lightning rods contain platinum or silver as well? Be careful though, some lightning rods from before WW II also contain slight amounts of radioactive radium or uranium. People thought, back then, the radioactive material would ionize the air around it making lightning flow easier; which, all being said and done is a bit weird, since you certainly don't want to attract even MORE lightning. Thanks for the video and taking me up on my suggestion about the solder :) Great video

Hey did u ever figure out what the white precipitate from the remaining brazing rods in reaction flask was.

I have a dumb question I know nothing about chemistry but before additional rinses would not get a better concentrate by boiling off the water first? Also would smaller pieces work better...and also would meltdown allow you to recover the silver

All that sweet sweet nitric acid used.

I have silver chloride black in colour but I can’t recover full silver from it. Plzz help me

HI, I have about 10lbs of mixed silver solder of various silver concentrations? Some of it may be just brass too? is it worth my time and effort to refine it? is there an easier way to determine the silver content? or could I just list it on ebay as low grade 15% silver and just sell it for that? I know for a fact about 5 oz. of it is easy flow 56% silver. Thanks for the help. jeremy

Great video and very informative - I always wonder why Americans pronounce “solder” as “sodder” 😉

Nice.

What if you disolve the brazing rods in hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide and silver should deposit on the bottom??

What happened to the 5% nickel? Awesome video, I’ve been trying to learn how to do this for years

What was that spray you used when transferring to the 4000ml?

At what point did you convert the silver nitrate to silver chloride? Ken

Do you think that you might have your goal of 2.1 troy oz. When you processed the other parts of silver that was unrecovered? I like that you show the waste bucket and beaker with the very little bit of silver in each. I'm very impressed with how good you are at refining the things that you do, it amazes me!! Thank you Sreetips!!

Precip is silver nitrate or what ever the other metal is

What do you do with the waste once you cement everything out of it. How do you dispose of it?

It is still an honor to benefit from your sacrifice in the name of education, thank you again. Would I be correct to speculate the cost of the nitric would negate the recovery on a couple 2lb blooms that are 28% silver according to a spectral analysis?

I used 40% Nitric ..that's about 8 mol of Nitric per liter... so I needed (fictionally) half a liter of Nitric = 4 mol of HNO3 to dissolve 0.5 ( 3 x 108) = 162 grams of Silver. You need that for every metal and also need to take in account what the solubility is. You can also see that in diluted nitric with every 3 mol of Silver 2 mol = 36 grams of water is formed.

Did you figure out what the sediment was during the nitric acid stage? I've been dissolving whole circuit boards in nitric and have been dealing with mystery sediment the whole time. I don't know if it's good stuff or bad stuff... but it is a tan color and it settles fast, leaving a forest green liquid that looks just like stuff you had in a palladium video. I really don't suspect mine is due to large amounts of palladium though.

Nice video sir excellent and what is this sodium hydroxide is LyE please tell me sir

I had some Galena which I crushed up in a pest mortis and added to a beaker with diluted nitric acid then ran it through a filter then added hydrochloric acid to drop out the silver chloride. And it look like cottage cheese but my question is would lead drop out of the solution

Is there a way to get the copper refined from the waste?

Pretty sure that solution you poured off the blue stuff was full of silver if you would have dropped a piece of copper in there the copper would have drew it out

Interesting. I am new to chemistry. Just wondering how cost efficient is this experiment? At this moment silver is at $780.00 per Troy ounce.

At 25:00 looks like you made colloidal silver (the amber liquid)

GFS should sponsor you lol

Just wondering, are you able to recover and melt the copper you get off your iron or do you not bother with it?

What would happen if you didn't use the sodium hydroxide and the sugar and just melted it down?