Removing Silver from old silverplate, holloware, etc.

A. Paula,

Nope.

The chemicals used to strip the plating off and reclaim them are corrosive or toxic or just not real friendly. It takes a bit of work to set up everything needed to do the job right. There is not enough silver or copper plated on your parts to make it worth it.

A. Hi Paula,
The amount of silver you could recover from silver plate would not be worth chemically stripping. You would have to buy the stripper, and dispose of the silver bearing stripper in the right manner. The collection may have copper value, depending on the total weight. Metal recyclers may be interested. Another option is to put a fair market value on the collection and like you say, donate it to charity for a possible tax deduction. Good Luck!

A. Hi John,

This is hard to do electrolytically in simple salt or dilute acid solutions because silver is more noble than brass, meaning that the brass will go into solution preferentially. You would need cyanide based strippers (no go for home use) or hopefully some less toxic alternatives. Thread 225/07 is "Stripping Silver from Brass" and describes those alternatives.

Still, many of these solutions are too toxic for home use or for use without hazmat training.

Luck & Regards,


Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
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A. One way to go about removing silver from silver plate is the abrasive method, as silver becomes ever more expensive (today spot price is $32.64/oz ) the cost of recovering silver will be more economical. I recommend rigging an abrasive wire or grinder to wind or solar power, fit the item on a lathe and rig it to go back and forth and turn every so often, time is your enemy if you want it done fast because fast will cost you money, if you're willing to wait you can recover plenty of dust that can be collected (if contained properly) and then melted down with a home-built foundry. If you do not have any of these things or are not planning on building them anyway then this method is more costly than just selling it to a scrap recycling company.

I recommend the home built solution because in the end you will learn a new skill and become more self sufficient which will pay off more than any silver recovery process you may do.

A. Hi Muniraju. The question is pretty broad. Most silver plating is not economically feasible to recover, and for the rest it depends on the thickness. But different stripping methods are required depending on the base metal.

But I think the important thing is to not buy scrap unless you know what it is, and to acquire some experience on a small scale before getting involved with large quantities. Another issue of course is that this can be dangerous, depending on the knowledge and facilities you can bring to bear. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi again cousin . You can search this site for "silver refining" and "silver stripping" to find dozens of threads and specific answers. But there is no universal stripper where you just throw your parts into a vat and out pop stripped parts plus pure silver. The stripping method will depend on whether the silver has a clearcoat/lacquer on it, and whether the substrate is nickel silver, a copper alloy, steel, aluminum, or something else. It depends on whether it's practical to use electricity on the particular items, whether you are allowed to use cyanide-based strippers in your area, and whether you are trying to preserve the substrate (such as silver plated brass musical instruments) or it's okay to treat everything strictly as scrap. My understanding is that most silver refining starts with melting the scrap rather than stripping it; still, it does seems that if you can segregate it based on the factors listed above, it may be possible to strip the silver off, abrasively, chemically, or electrochemically -- although not necessarily at a profit.

You need to invest more time though, cousin. You've submitted requests for help 16 times but not followed up when readers took the time to help you on other threads. We've requested repeatedly that you please describe your situation so readers can try to answer you as a consumer if you are a consumer, as an OEM customer if that's what you are, as a plating operator, or whatever. Please describe who you are, the source of the parts (and its volume), with your general thoughts on what you are trying to achieve (preserve the parts, or scrap them) -- and I'm confident readers can help!  🙂

Good Luck and Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey