G’day - and OH DEAR!! Verily I have sinned and great is the
sinning thereof! For goodness sake disregard and trash my previous
posting headed, “Lead/Silver”. It is complete rubbish! I am
really getting senile!
Let’s start again. First these archaic chemical terms; it is
time we all used modern terms, such as Hydrochloric acid (HCl) or
hydrogen chloride which was: ‘Muriatic acid’ or 'spirits of salt’
Nitric acid (HNO3) used to be ‘aqua fortis’ Sulphuric acid
(H2S04 used to be ‘oil of vitriol’ Ethanol or ethyl alcohol
(C2H5OH) used to be Spirits of wine Ammonia or ammonium
hydroxide (NH3OH) was ‘spirits of hartshorn’ Copper sulphate
(CuSO4) was ‘blue vitriol’ Acetic acid still is vinegar (vin
aigre) or sour wine GLACIAL acetic acid is so strong it burns
flesh, and solidifies at 15C and so on. Let’s use the modern
words, eh? Please?
Now, a re-write of 'Lead/silver:-
G’day; I was most interested in Darryl’s note on removing lead
solder from gold with nitric acid (he said, "muriatic acid"which
is hydrochloric acid and wont work : Im sure he meant 'nitric
acid '). I can see that nitric 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 to give
soluble lead or tin nitrates. 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, giving
silver nitrate (AgNO3). Wish I knew a method for removing solder
from botched silver “repairs”. But thanks anyway, Darryl, I
never thought of doing that for botched gold “repairs”.
And I am extremely sorry for adding more circles of confusion
than I tried to remove. Mea Culpa!
/\
/ / John Burgess, (Hangdog)
/ /
/ //\ @John_Burgess2
/ / \ \
/ (___)
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