Well I admit I am a newbie with melting and pouring small ingots to recycle back to sheet and wire. So I spent a bit of time coating my crucible with borax, and I thought it had a good coating. When I melted fine silver and poured an ingot, half remained behind and is stuck on the sides of the crucible. I peeled one strip off and a lot of crucible material is stuck to the silver. I know I have to destroy the crucible to get the rest of the silver. Will I be able to re melt the silver and separate it from the crucible material? Looks like silicate?? Help?? Advice?
You should be able to heat the crucible up and with a little extra time pour the silver and excess borax out. When it cools you should be able to recover the silver.
Sounds like you just didn’t get everything hot enough when you poured or didn’t pour fast enough. It takes practice to learn to pour very hot melted metal into a fairly small opening, but it comes with time. As you pour, concentrate heat on the path that the metal will follow, especially the pouring tip. If you don’t like your pour, just do it over. I coat a new crucible with borax that I sift into it using a cheap glass salt shaker. This is the same salt shaker that I use to add borax to a melt. It is not a goood idea to try and chip metal out of the crucible as you found out. Heat it again and try to pour the excess melted borax and silver out onto a piece of charcoal or metal ingot mold. In the end, when your crucible is no longer useful, you can send it in to your refiner and they can recover the scrap. I have a pile of old crucibles that I keep forgetting to do this with, but eventully I will remember. Good luck…Rob
I forgot to mention in my previous post to go to my website www.robmeixner.com under the Links tab and you will find a couple PDFs that talk about casting and rolling ingots. One is from a few years ago where I cast in an open mold, the more recent one shows casting in Delft Clay or Petrobond.
Thanks for your very helpful, informative PDF’s on casting and rolling ingots! I have not been forging, so will from now on.
Thank you Rob for taking the time to help. I do have a lot of fine silver scrap that I want to turn into sheet. And with a new rolling mill, I am learning to melt and pour. Thanks again!