Recycling Silver

A short course on metal recycling was quite useful. Even though I knew the basics, I picked up a few tips on the way.
The most useful was that one can use Delft clay as a mould and make very nice rod shaped ingots by using drill bits (in different diameters, to make the holes).
We were taught Delft clay casting at college, and cast some simple shapes, but as that's not really my style - I didn't think it would be useful for me.
Now I know it can be very practical, especially if the end result is intended to be round wire.

Delft clay prepared mould

The other quite nice thing was pouring the silver directly into water to form organic shapes, a bit like cornflakes. Not quite as practical, but some of the shapes were very interesting.

Here are the results of various techniques that people tried out:

This was what I made - some 0.4 mm sheet, and a square rod. On the right - typical scrap I have that was used to make them.

The process of making usable metal is quite time consuming, but very satisfying to produce lovely metal sheet from scraps!