Hello all… I’ve recently tried my hand at silver etching using
ferric nitrate and PnP blue (with mixed results - but it was my
first time) and now my question is this…
What does one do with all of that silver-laden ferric nitrate?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
Best Regards,
Bill
What does one do with all of that silver-laden ferric nitrate?
Bill, Perhaps your dentist can give you the name of a silver
reclaimer. There used to be companies that collected discarded x-ray
film and extracted the silver from them.
I don’t know how to precipitate the silver out of solution. One
Christmas my dad shaped copper wire into a star shape, stuck it into
a cork, then suspended it into a something-nitrate solution from his
lab (he was a biochemist). Overnight, the copper wire became
encrusted with silver. The silver snowflake went onto the mantle.
Janet
What does one do with all of that silver-laden ferric nitrate?
I know there were answers about neutralizing the acid. No argument.
But I wonder whether you realize that you can keep using the same
acid over and over until it won’t etch anymore, which is a long
time. The etch actually seems to become more agressive for the first
several uses, then gradually declines. I just pour the used stuff
right back into the same bottle. It gets very blue, but that doesn’t
matter. My current bottle takes about 30 minutes to do what it
should do in 5 or ten, so I guess it’s about time to replace it.
Soon, anyway.
–No�l
I don't know how to precipitate the silver out of solution.
Add salt water. It precipitates the silver as insoluble silver
chloride, which you can filter from the solution with just a coffee
filter.