- #1
Mister_Better
- 9
- 0
Greetings electro chemistry wizards! A quick speculation here... should be easy to sort out whether feasible.
I have nice old pocket watch made of sterling silver that some numpty tried to fix with soft solder - lead & tin i presume but god knows when repair was attempted so it could be newer non toxic alloy. Anyhow i want to effect a repair but the small amount of structural silver that is left is riddled with a horrible mess of lead and tin. Apparently hydrochloric acid is one way to proceed (any info on why would be cool btw) but I wondered if the galvanic series could be used in some way to electrically liberate the silver / copper alloy of the leaded mess... Like a sacraficial zinc anode, or electrically deannodizing the silver (as in lead annodizing on ali).
Lead and tin are both less noble than silver and copper. Is it possible to rig up an electrolytic cell to do this? I guess the pocket watch case would need to be one end of the cell (cathode I am thinking) and Id hope to wind up with all the lead and tin of the solder on the other end.
I don't want to oxidize anything particularly, only to gently persuade the nasty mess that is standing in the way of my repair, to go elsewhere!
If theoretically possible what electrolyte etch should be used? This is one shot by the way if I stuff it up it's just going to be a pile of scrap silver and a rather nice 19th century timepiece mechanism!
I have nice old pocket watch made of sterling silver that some numpty tried to fix with soft solder - lead & tin i presume but god knows when repair was attempted so it could be newer non toxic alloy. Anyhow i want to effect a repair but the small amount of structural silver that is left is riddled with a horrible mess of lead and tin. Apparently hydrochloric acid is one way to proceed (any info on why would be cool btw) but I wondered if the galvanic series could be used in some way to electrically liberate the silver / copper alloy of the leaded mess... Like a sacraficial zinc anode, or electrically deannodizing the silver (as in lead annodizing on ali).
Lead and tin are both less noble than silver and copper. Is it possible to rig up an electrolytic cell to do this? I guess the pocket watch case would need to be one end of the cell (cathode I am thinking) and Id hope to wind up with all the lead and tin of the solder on the other end.
I don't want to oxidize anything particularly, only to gently persuade the nasty mess that is standing in the way of my repair, to go elsewhere!
If theoretically possible what electrolyte etch should be used? This is one shot by the way if I stuff it up it's just going to be a pile of scrap silver and a rather nice 19th century timepiece mechanism!
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