{"id":43,"date":"2009-07-08T21:25:05","date_gmt":"2009-07-09T01:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasondeck.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/?p=43"},"modified":"2009-07-08T21:25:05","modified_gmt":"2009-07-09T01:25:05","slug":"reclaiming-argentium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jasondeck\/2009\/07\/08\/reclaiming-argentium\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming Argentium"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m part way through a long project, and I’m going out of town next week so I won’t have any new projects to post for a while, so I though I might put up something small in the meantime.<\/p>\n

One of the things that was brought up in the Ronda Coryell<\/a> fusing workshop I attended was how easily you can fuse scrap into a ball.\u00a0 I, like other students, have had issues when reclaiming sterling and sometimes end up with a less than ideal ingot that has poor working properties.<\/p>\n

For students this can be very frustrating, due to the small amounts of metal we usually keep on hand.\u00a0 Seldom does a student or hobbyist use metal on such a scale that sending in scrap is really useful.\u00a0 It’s very handy to be able to take clean scrap on the order of 1\/4 ounce to 2 ounces and reclaim it in an effort to make some sheet or wire.<\/p>\n

Interested in this, I took the bits left from the piercing out of the benzene ring in the last post<\/a>, and tossed them on a compressed charcoal block with the adhesive and paper on them still.\u00a0 Using the Gentec small torch, with propane and oxygen set to a slightly reducing flame, I heated the bits pretty aggressively.\u00a0 The paper and binder burned away quickly, the ball formed up, and a little of it was accidentally blown off by the force of the torch.\u00a0 I heated the remaining liquid metal for several seconds to ensure it had ample time to divest itself of carbonaceous crap, and to abuse it just a little.\u00a0 The new ball was cooled to black heat, and quenched.\u00a0 The formed ball was quite nice looking, and to give it a simple (although inadequate) test I hit it with a ball peen hammer on an anvil a few times to see if it would crack.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

It seems to have come out quite well.\u00a0 The dark spots are surface garbage and not porosity.\u00a0 To be fair this was a loaded example, and the paper and binders most likely added to the reduction atmosphere.\u00a0 None the less, a good first try.\u00a0 Soon I should have enough scrap to make more than a 3-5 mm ball.\u00a0 I’ll reclaim it and roll it out, and try to directly compare with some sterling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"