Lead on silver

G’day; I was most interested in Darryl’s note on removing lead
solder from gold with nitric acid (he said, “muriatic acid”). I
can see that it would work well, as gold doesn’t react with it
alone; gold dissolves only in aqua regia which is a
nitric-hydrochloric acid mixture, giving a gold chloride (auric
chloride) but lead and tin do react with nitric acid.
However one would be ill-advised to try and remove lead from
silver with nitric acid as nitric acid reacts very strongly with
fine or sterling silver. Wish I knew a method for removing
solder from botched silver “repairs”. But thanks, Darryl, I
never thought of that for botched gold “repairs”.

    /\
   / /    John Burgess, 
  / /
 / //\    @John_Burgess2
/ / \ \

/ (___)
(_________)

Just a tought on acid - I always thought the muriatic acid was
the same as hydrochloric acid, only available at the hardware
store. I recall from chemistry class that they smell the same…

Cheers
Douglas

Just a tought on acid - I always thought the muriatic acid was
the same as hydrochloric acid, only available at the hardware
store. I recall from chemistry class that they smell the same…

Cheers
Douglas