Since it quit raining and got hot (90s F) I decided it was time to sun my silver. I poured it all in a heavy glass jar I got at Walmart and set it in the sun on my front porch for three days. I left the top open but covered with one of my wife's sheer hose. (She didn't miss it.) This did two things. First, it allowed the ether to evaporate as it boils at 94 F. It also allowed a lot of the alcohol to evaporate. Second thing it did was react with the introduced impurities and caused them to turn black and drop to the bottom. After three days it was looking pretty murky. Time to filter it.
I do this outside and not in the house since I don't have a place to work with something so messy. I worked at a glass top table and placed a large plastic tray on that. It was deep enough to easily hold all the 1.5L of silver solution if it were to spill. I had a 1000ml beaker, 500ml graduated cylinder, hydrometer, medium sized funnel, coffee filters, a supply of paper towels, and an empty plastic sack to put the used paper towels and filters in. I always wear gloves when messing with silver nitrate and also eye protection any time I have the silver out of the tank. I took the metal fasteners off the big jar and carefully filtered the solution into the 1,000ml beaker. I poured the rest through the filter into the 500ml graduate and measured the specific gravity. It looked to be about 107.00, which is good enough. I will add some more distilled water when I start using the 8x10 tank again, to fill the level back up. This should drop the SG down slightly. I ended up filtering the solution three times because the first and second filtering was still catching crud. The third came out clean. I decided to go back to using my 5x7 tank while waiting for my new 8x10 holder to come. The 5x7 tank is easier to handle and fits in my cooler bag with the blue ice. I filled the 5x7 Lund tank and put the rest of the silver solution in the 8x10 tank to safely store it. I didn't mess with checking the pH as I think it's most likely fine.
Using a garden hose I carefully rinsed everything off that had silver on it, and then rinsed the big glass jar, beaker, and cylinder out with distilled water so there would be no deposits left on them. Took off the gloves and threw them in the sack, tied up the sack and threw it in the trash. Photos below.
1. Silver solution after sunning for three days. Murky!
2. My set up for maintenance.
3. Filtering
4. Hydrometer in tap water: 1.000 means neutral, which is what it should be reading.
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