Silver nitrate?

[Rodger]

Does anyone else here use silver nitrate crystals for silver fuming? I have a pretty big bottle of it from dad's chemistry days, and I took a class with a very experienced scientific/artistic lampworker and he uses silver nitrate to fume too. I've tried it a few times, and when I fume a piece quite heavily, it goes kinda matte and dull, sometimes grainy/bumpy too... I figure this could ether be my steel tweeters disintegrating on my and getting 'fumed' too, it's just what happens normally with too heavy silver fuming, or it's because I'm using silver nitrate instead of pure silver...

Any help would be appreciated (and I have an industrial extraction fan BTW )

[menty666]

I've never done it, but I know there have been a couple of threads about it over on talkglass.com You might have a peek on there.

[Mr. Meker]

You can do it. It sounds like you are putting it on tweezers and then heating it. Try a rod. Just get it warm and dip it in the bottle. The powder should fizz and give off some nasty red brown gas, but you will have some black stuff on your rod. This is silver.

You can also put a few grains in a chinese cobalt tube and melt this up. It is really nice.

[steak351]

roll the point in it like in frit

[wickedglass]

It's good you have decent extraction because repeated high level exposure to silver compounds can cause argyria, so, remember, if your skin turns blue you can legally change your name to Smurf!
Just buy yourself an ounce of silver and cut slivers off it, it's not very expensive and safer to use than compounds, extraction or no extraction. Also, if you accidentally knock over your jar, you'll have silver nitrate dust everywhere which is hard to clean up, believe me. You can't knock over and spill a silver ingot or coin ...
I used to use silver oxide back in the early 90s but I've always been suspicious of using chemical forms of metals, most of them can be quite toxic, including AgNO3.

[Mr. Smiley]

I second the using a glass rod and not your tweezers... Get the tip of a dark cobalt or black rod hot... dip and heat it slowly in the edge of your flame... it'll turn to little silver balls... then fume...

[Mr. Smiley]

use the darker stiff colors to keep it from getting out of control while you're trying to fume... lots of folks use clear and end up doing an acrobat routine while they're trying to fume or the silver just sinks into the softer glass... a good stiff glass is much easier.

[Rodger]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I do have some thin pure silver wire too, so I'm not sure the nitrate is really worth the hassle for plain fuming... It might be interesting to see if it yields a different effect though. I once tried some silver wire on the end of a clear rod and it just sunk into the end haha, so the dark stiff rod tip is great! I'm even thinking of ordering a little quartz rod for a fuming punti...

[gmkcpa]

I got 2 quartz rods-one for silver and one for gold. The problem I have with quartz is that even blasting it with my Carlisle CC and tanked oxy the quartz won't melt. The best I can do is shape it just a very little bit, to get a semi-flat end with a tiny dimple in it from trying to poke my tungstin pick into it. Then I balance my gold or silver in that tiny dimple and try to keep my hand steady enough while fuming so that it doesn't fall off the rod. As mentioned above, I think the best rod to use for gold and silver is the stiffest colored rod that you have to hold the gold or silver.

[Mr. Meker]

You could send it to me....

[metalbone]

I used it once, but when I fumed it, I got a whiff of nitric acid smell despite good ventillation. I figure, why be exposed to both nitirc acid fumes and silver, why not just fume with straight silver and avoid the acid...

[fyrsmith]

I always use silver nitrate for fuming. The advantage I see is that you never have to make a little dimple and try to get a piece of liquid silver to stay in it. Make a small boro dish, put a few crystals of AgNO3 in it. Heat the end of a boro rod and touch it to the crystals.
The AgNO3 instantly becomes a dark liquid on the end of the rod. With good ventilation, burn off the NO3, leaving a coating of pure silver and tiny, tiny silver balls on the rod. This is very easy to fume with. If you fume very heavily, the "grainy surface" is pure silver redeposited on your piece.

[Rodger]

I just tried this method today and it worked really well actually. Having the silver all over the tip of the rod actually makes it more stable because you don't need to concentrate the flame on the very tip of the rod, so there's less problems with drippy glass and stuff!
I also had a rod of cracky asian black which was perfect for the job

[daro]

I found a supply of silver pellets from a local jeweler. Apparently if you pour molten silver into cold water, it forms pellets. I want to try it but really don't want to hurt myself! I use a 6mm boro rod for fuming. I place the silver pellet on a graphite pad and heat the tip of the rod to white hot and drop it down over the silver. As soon as contact is made I slide the rod to one side and the thermal shock makes the silver jump inside. While fuming(either light or heavy) I keep the end of the rod out of the fire and just burn the silver, on a bushy fuming flame(propane rich) the silver jumps up to the flame and gets busy vaporizing. As long as i remember to tend the tip after fuming, very little runaway silver pops out on the next run.
On the silver nitrate kick, it has some nice properties with soft glass. Quenching a gather (on a blowpipe with a bubble started) into a solution of silver nitrate and water lays some crazy veins on the piece. Stir the solution just prior to quenching so the nitrate clouds the water and remember to keep your thumb tightly plugged on the blowtube or risk some steam burn damage!
Fyrsmith's technique sounds pretty cool. I wonder if that silver extraction gives a grainy texture on heavy fume because it's pure and if sterling silver will never have that purity. Where can i get me some nitrate?