G’day, and here’s my contribution to this thread. I worked at a
research establishment just after the war, and for a job I was doing
I needed a few inches of angle iron; so I went outside to the scrap
heap armed with a hacksaw, and found what I needed. Meanwhile I
noticed a tube around 5 feet long and about 2 inches diameter, with
a wall thickness of about a sixteenth. It had a silvery appearance,
but felt much heavier than aluminium. So I cut a tiny bit off, and in
the chemistry lab, dissolved it in nitric acid, added salt solution,
got a white precipitate, so slowly added ammonia and the precipitate
dissolved. I checked a bit more acid sample with dichromate
solution, and got a crimson precipitate. Lo, pure silver!! Alors!!!
So I cut off about 8 inches and being a slightly honest sort of
bloke (?) told the Boss, who of course, told me not to be daft;
people don’t throw silver on a scrap heap! Anyway he was persuaded
and later thanked me for being honest. Ha ha. I took that 8
inches home (I did say SLIGHTLY honest. I regarded it as a reward))
and eventually made triangular anticlastic napkin rings. And that’s
part of why I began messing with jewellery. – Cheers for now,
John Burgess; @John_Burgess2 of Mapua, Nelson NZ