Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:



It's over $7 for pure, and, yes, I agree, it's wasteful, but if the swarf is
caught, very little is lost. Refining silver is easy.

Harold



I'll bet you can tell me this; how does one tell the different silver
alloys apart? Low tech method preferably..

The wife and I stopped at a yard sale, they had some old silverware for
sale.. Some of the forks caught my eye for some reason, they looked
different from the silverplate I'm familiar with- they were tarnished at
the ends instead of all over, and it was a nice even black tarnish.. I
asked the woman how much for one, bought it, took it to the car and cut
a tine with my cutters and it was solid, not plated. I figured it'd be
worth a small investment to get the rest, bought them for $3 and there
was about 6 lbs. of those forks there. Put the ruined one under the
torch and it was definitely silver (based on experience with silver
solder). Some of the copper came out when melted, polish it and it's
shiny again:-) Also, no smoke or boiling of the puddle so I figured
they're not german silver.. Very fast heat transfer.. everything I could
think of that would indicate silver was present. They're not marked
sterling, whadaya think- coin silver?

Hated ruining the fork, but I knew of no other test on the spot.

John