Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Homemade substance attacking silver

Homemade substance attacking silver

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 13:13

Hello, does anyone know of homemade or an easily available substance(s) that can attack silver?

Would be better if it does not pose health risks upon exposure

Thank you

aga - 30-12-2015 at 13:40

Table Salt.

Makes it go brown.

I guess it first forms Silver chloride which then decomposes with sunlight to give elemental silver and chlorine gas.

Finely divided silver (atoms) does not have a shine like a solid fused lump of crystalline silver metal.

[Edited on 30-12-2015 by aga]

JJay - 30-12-2015 at 13:49

You can make hydrogen sulfide at home pretty easily.... Unfortunately, it smells and is on the same order of toxicity as hydrogen cyanide.

Can you get nitric acid or materials to make it?.

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 13:51

Hello Aga,

Quote:

Table Salt.

Makes it go brown.

I guess it first forms Silver chloride which then decomposes with sunlight to give elemental silver and chlorine gas.

Finely divided silver (atoms) does not have a shine like a solid fused lump of crystalline silver metal.

What are the conditions of the reactions in order for it to happen?

Should I boil silver in salt water? Or expose silver to salt fumes?

[Edited on 30-12-2015 by khourygeo78]

BromicAcid - 30-12-2015 at 13:57

Attack as in dissolve or just surface pitting/discoloration. Rather than hydrogen sulfide, liver of sulfur is an easy to prepare concoction which will give a nice coloration.

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 14:01

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

You can make hydrogen sulfide at home pretty easily.... Unfortunately, it smells and is on the same order of toxicity as hydrogen cyanide.

Can you get nitric acid or materials to make it?.

I just checked about hydrogen sulfide. Seems pretty dangerous

It is very hard to get nitric acid here at my location. Also, the material to make it that I know about (nitrates) are also hard to find. There are pretty no chemicals to find in the area.
I got my hands on sulfur from an agricultural store. Not sure how I can react it with silver. Exposing to fumes?
And I'm not sure how dangerous it will be

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 14:09

Quote: Originally posted by BromicAcid

Attack as in dissolve or just surface pitting/discoloration. Rather than hydrogen sulfide, liver of sulfur is an easy to prepare concoction which will give a nice coloration.

All I want is to corrupt silver, as much as possible and in the safest way possible. Turning it entirely or mostly into a solution will do the trick

So I'd like to know about both. Surface pitting/discloration is enough to know about if I work with silver fine powder, but I may possibly not find silver powder either. There are no chemical stores in my location or nearby unfortunately.
Also, I wont possibly find liver of sulfur, except if you mean that I can prepare it with available materials

[Edited on 30-12-2015 by khourygeo78]

tempwg48 - 30-12-2015 at 14:37

Quote: Originally posted by khourygeo78

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

You can make hydrogen sulfide at home pretty easily.... Unfortunately, it smells and is on the same order of toxicity as hydrogen cyanide.

Can you get nitric acid or materials to make it?.

You can get 1.5lbs of Potassium Nitrates for $6 on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-5LB-STUMP-REMOVER-32015-/161829200...
and probably sulphuric acid (drain unblocker) on ebay USA. For certain on ebay UK.

Boffis - 30-12-2015 at 15:00

Ferric salts particularly ferric nitrate but also ferric chloride and probably other attack silver. Ferric chloride coates the silver with insoluble silver chloride which slows further attack so ferric nitrate is preferred for etching solutions.

Alkali persulphates attack silver as do alkali cyanides. Potassium ferricyanide also attachs silver. Some sulphur compounds such as thiosulphates, thiourea, dithionites etc dissolve silver too though on warming silver sulphide is aften formed too.

aga - 30-12-2015 at 15:14

Just spray some saturated table salt solution over the Silver of your enemies.

I assume you want to really annoy someone.

It will not happen immediately, but their Silver will not be nice and Shiny after a few days.

Forks are the worst - it is really hard to get the brown stains off.

Learnt about that at a 5 star safari hotel in the Tanzanian part of the Serengeti.

The solid silver cutlery was stained brown, especially the forks, so i asked why.

I liked the chemistry part of the answer so much that i did not care that they did not bother to clean them as thoroughly as you might expect.

There was also a bored-looking guy with an AK47, so thought it best not to ask too much about cutlery cleanliness.

Edit:

If you want to steal some silver and then hide it, maybe electrolysis would work in a NaCl solution ?

I have never tried this or looked it up.

Anybody ever done this ?

[Edited on 30-12-2015 by aga]

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 15:38

Quote: Originally posted by tempwg48

Quote: Originally posted by khourygeo78

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

You can make hydrogen sulfide at home pretty easily.... Unfortunately, it smells and is on the same order of toxicity as hydrogen cyanide.

Can you get nitric acid or materials to make it?.

I live in a 3rd world country. I cant buy anything on ebay in my country. I can barely find a chemical store unfortunately

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 15:42

Quote: Originally posted by Boffis

Ferric salts particularly ferric nitrate but also ferric chloride and probably other attack silver. Ferric chloride coates the silver with insoluble silver chloride which slows further attack so ferric nitrate is preferred for etching solutions.

Alkali persulphates attack silver as do alkali cyanides. Potassium ferricyanide also attachs silver. Some sulphur compounds such as thiosulphates, thiourea, dithionites etc dissolve silver too though on warming silver sulphide is aften formed too.

The problem is I cannot find anything of these as they are. If there is a way to prepare them, it would be great. There are some ways in which I can prepare nitric acid&Hydrochloric acid or maybe direct fumes of nitric acid towards silver or those of HCL towards iron and then join iron chloride to silver, but I would need a really strong fire which I cannot produce outdoors or in the kitchen

JJay - 30-12-2015 at 15:53

Some have suggested that it may be possible to dissolve silver in a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. I haven't tested this but have seen a couple of user reports stating that it works.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=19477#...

khourygeo78 - 30-12-2015 at 16:03

Quote: Originally posted by aga

Just spray some saturated table salt solution over the Silver of your enemies.

I assume you want to really annoy someone.

It will not happen immediately, but their Silver will not be nice and Shiny after a few days.

Forks are the worst - it is really hard to get the brown stains off.

Learnt about that at a 5 star safari hotel in the Tanzanian part of the Serengeti.

The solid silver cutlery was stained brown, especially the forks, so i asked why.

I liked the chemistry part of the answer so much that i did not care that they did not bother to clean them as thoroughly as you might expect.

There was also a bored-looking guy with an AK47, so thought it best not to ask too much about cutlery cleanliness.

Edit:

If you want to steal some silver and then hide it, maybe electrolysis would work in a NaCl solution ?

I have never tried this or looked it up.

Anybody ever done this ?

[Edited on 30-12-2015 by aga]

Haha, no. I knew someone would say that :p
All I want is to corrode silver a little so I can work on it with less corrosive substances like acetic acid, salt, potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate which I can easily make at home safely. I want to do a couple of experiments on metals to understand a little bit about them

And lol about the forks, what a waste. Not sure why they would keep them.

I guess I will try staining silver with salt water and other salts and see how it goes. And if it goes well and then I find powdered silver things will be great

Thanks everyone for the help&time btw

zed - 30-12-2015 at 16:49

Attack Silver? Yeah. Electricity. I expect it might be pretty easy to anodize in a Sodium Chloride Solution. Won't take long.

Sulaiman - 31-12-2015 at 02:12

Silver is a fairly expensive metal to use for experimenting with salts
and many silver salts are insoluble, making chemistry more difficult
but the photo-reactivity of the halides adds a lot of interest
e.g. silver chloride blackens quickly in sunlight - one of the original photographic techniques.

Silver salts, especially silver nitrate, stain surfaces really efficiently, especially as soon as light gets to your skin,
I've done it more than once !

wear gloves (e.g. latex),
DO NOT EXPERIMENT IN THE KITCHEN UNLESS YOU WANT GRIEF !
(mother/sister/partner etc.)
after using silver salts I now rinse with dilute sodium thiosulphate solution to avoid stains.

Sulphur and many of its compounds attack silver, the problem is that the result is insoluble silver sulphide,
which does not easily react with simple chemistry (I believe, ... you should check)

Electrolysis is certainly a reliable way to get silver metal into solution as ions (Ag+)
(e.g. one lithium cell battery, silver wire anode and cathode, water produces silver ions and nano-particles in solution)

About the cheapest source of high purity silver is a Canadian maple leaf coin, 99.99% Ag
(I think that the 0.1% in 99.9% Ag USA silver eagle coins is enough to give a green/blue tinge to silver nitrate and make it photosensitive)
for smaller quantities use jewellery 99.9 solid silver wire available via eBay etc.
But if you are going to buy silver, why not buy a silver salt such as silver nitrate?
If you start from scrap silver then you will need to remove the copper ... see YouTube for silver refining ... mostly requiring nitric acid.

You must try the silver mirror experiment, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUX_cpFWNso

I also like silver acetylide (TINY quantities with care, see YouTube) e.g. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=silver+acetylid...

So, in my opinion, you have started with a difficult but interesting metal.
Have fun !

P.S. wear goggles or any suitable eye protection, just use it
... e.g. even tiny droplets of silver nitrate solution can harm corneas
(Sorry, my current obsession, I just regained full vision after cateract operations ... treasure yours)

[Edited on 31-12-2015 by Sulaiman]

aga - 31-12-2015 at 10:02

Quote: Originally posted by khourygeo78

acetic acid, salt, potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate which I can easily make at home

If you have ash from a wood fire, then you already have potassium hydroxide as well.

If you have snail shells, eggshells or Limestone, you also have Calcium carbonate.

Maybe a Lemon ? Citric acid and friends are also yours already.

khourygeo78 - 2-1-2016 at 06:06

Quote: Originally posted by zed

Attack Silver? Yeah. Electricity. I expect it might be pretty easy to anodize in a Sodium Chloride Solution. Won't take long.

Good idea, I never thought of that. Still newb about all experimental sciences, I only thought about chemical substances

khourygeo78 - 2-1-2016 at 06:38

Quote: Originally posted by Sulaiman

Silver is a fairly expensive metal to use for experimenting with salts
and many silver salts are insoluble, making chemistry more difficult
but the photo-reactivity of the halides adds a lot of interest
e.g. silver chloride blackens quickly in sunlight - one of the original photographic techniques.

Silver salts, especially silver nitrate, stain surfaces really efficiently, especially as soon as light gets to your skin,
I've done it more than once !

wear gloves (e.g. latex),
DO NOT EXPERIMENT IN THE KITCHEN UNLESS YOU WANT GRIEF !
(mother/sister/partner etc.)
after using silver salts I now rinse with dilute sodium thiosulphate solution to avoid stains.

Sulphur and many of its compounds attack silver, the problem is that the result is insoluble silver sulphide,
which does not easily react with simple chemistry (I believe, ... you should check)

Electrolysis is certainly a reliable way to get silver metal into solution as ions (Ag+)
(e.g. one lithium cell battery, silver wire anode and cathode, water produces silver ions and nano-particles in solution)

About the cheapest source of high purity silver is a Canadian maple leaf coin, 99.99% Ag
(I think that the 0.1% in 99.9% Ag USA silver eagle coins is enough to give a green/blue tinge to silver nitrate and make it photosensitive)
for smaller quantities use jewellery 99.9 solid silver wire available via eBay etc.
But if you are going to buy silver, why not buy a silver salt such as silver nitrate?
If you start from scrap silver then you will need to remove the copper ... see YouTube for silver refining ... mostly requiring nitric acid.

You must try the silver mirror experiment, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUX_cpFWNso

I also like silver acetylide (TINY quantities with care, see YouTube) e.g. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=silver+acetylid...

So, in my opinion, you have started with a difficult but interesting metal.
Have fun !

P.S. wear goggles or any suitable eye protection, just use it
... e.g. even tiny droplets of silver nitrate solution can harm corneas
(Sorry, my current obsession, I just regained full vision after cateract operations ... treasure yours)

[Edited on 31-12-2015 by Sulaiman]

Hello,

I was thinking about attacking silver, transforming into silver compounds (for example silver nitrate-silver chloride-Ag2S)& avoiding dangerous substances and then dissolving into acetic acid immediately, so I get silver acetate which is supposedly safe to work with

Now I am thinking about making an electrolysis procedure, then dissolve in acetic acid. But I am not sure if this is possible

And I cannot easily buy chemicals here. I am living in a 3rd world country, chemicals are very rarely used here, so pretty much none sells them except for school&colleges etc. I am trying to rely on common substances easily made/found everywhere to go on with the procedure

I have worked on iron/copper before, seemed easy and interesting. Now I started working on something more difficult&stable (silver).

Thanks for the information

khourygeo78 - 2-1-2016 at 06:53

Quote: Originally posted by aga

Quote: Originally posted by khourygeo78

acetic acid, salt, potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate which I can easily make at home

I extract K2CO3 from wood ash (soluble salts are mostly k2co3). Not sure how k2co3 can be separated from KOH.

I usually avoid CaCo3, because I can easily get K2Co3&Na2Co3 at home, which tend to attack things better (they have higher ph)

Citric acid is a good idea. But I have not yet worked on it because I thought that it is not as good in dissolving as acetic acid.

I have to do lots of reading soon now that I know about many new stuffs.