Melting my sterling
silver scrap with a propane torch and silica melting dish,,,and casting into a homemade wooden ingot mold. You can find Borax in the laundry detergent aisle of any grocery store. The one-time-use mold was made from poplar wood and everyday wood glue. My results were even better than expected. Thanks for viewing.Borax helps the silver "flow" (liquefy) and traps the slag/dirt. I use about 1/2 teaspoon for every troy ounce of silver I'm melting, but it's not exact. Once you heat the silver red hot, sprinkle the borax on it and continue torching until the metal melts.The silver melted in this video was STERLING. The copper/tin/nickel will NOT separate from the silver by melting it....you would need acids to separate them. You really can't use too much BORAX. I used about a teaspoon for the silver in this video. If the silver looks dull or you see things floating on top of it (slag) when it's melted,,,add a little more borax to it.
Propane/Oxy should be more than sufficient. I actually re-melted the bar I cast in this video, along with some other scrap I found to make a larger 3 ounce bar (using another wooden mold), but I had to use an Oxy/Mapp torch to get it to melt (propane alone wasn't hot enough for that much silver),,,but that Oxy/Mapp at 5000+ degrees sure was!
