Pro tip: A: Keep all of your developed black and white prints that would otherwise be discarded, i.e. test prints B: Use E6, C41 or RA4 bleach to convert back to silver halides C: Then fix the silver out. Recovers all of the silver in the paper, not just the unexposed silver. This works on film too.
Just ran across this almost a year later. But also: Save your film leaders! Soak them in fixer to remove the silver, and that adds to it. My grad school photo program used to do that to collect extra silver.
I have to say (as I wear your Kodak-leaning film t-shirt) once again that I think you are honestly producing some of the best content on our craft out there. I seem to spend many minutes each night lately "coming up to speed" with something I thought I knew pretty well. Please, keep it up.
there is also a third method, which is very simple and spectacular: put the silver-saturated solution in a clean glass bottle and add to the solution a little bit of developer: you will immediately see the metallic silver precipitate in nanoparticles and coat the walls of the glass bottle :) for environmental reasons, I suggest you to use an hydroquinone-free developer
The Naked Photographer yes, you just have to shake the bottle in order to break the silver coating on the walls. the coating must be fairly thick (more or less like an aluminum foil), otherwise it will stay attached to the walls. I think you can also try to scratch it, as in the electroplating process. the obtained silver will appear almost black, with a metallic mirror look if it deposits on a perfectly smooth surface (the glass of the bottle) once you filter the silver from the fixer solution, you can wash it in clean water to further remove unwanted salts. I forgot to mention that, in order for the process to work, your solution should be alcaline (otherwise the activity of the developer is null). so maybe you have to use some carbonate if you have an acid fixer (I use an alcaline fixer and it works perfectly). I think you can also use ascorbic acid (regular vitamin C) as the reducing agent, together with the sodium carbonate (washing soda). thanks for your very well made videos!
Hello Naked Photographer, It's me, John ... and I'm sorry to say the silver magnet is no longer being manufactured or sold. The company that I sold them for closed shop during the pandemic. BUT. ... someone who worked there continues to manufacture trickle tanks, and I still distribute those, so if people are interested that's still an option. Thanks for the videos !!
Well that’s a bummer…I need something to either separate or dispose of some photo fixer solution that I ended up with from someone that left it at a house they sold
Many years ago I worked as an aerial photographer doing mapping photographer using a giant camera that used 10 inch roll film, all black and white. We had an electronic silver recovery system there. I don't remember the details of what it looked like, but I do remember seeing an actual nugget of silver that broke free of the anode.* I imagine there were impurities in it. *Useless trivia of the day: I just looked up anode and cathode, and the terminology is actually flip-flopped depending on the type of equipment. If it's a consumer of electricity, like a motor, the anode is positive. If the equipment is a producer of power (a battery, generator, solar cell, etc.) then the anode is negative.
I have noticed another way. I use PET bottles to store chemicals and I noticed that an old fixer solution stored for long time, formed a thin black layer over the bottle walls. Because PET is flexible I only needed squeeze and press bottle walls to remove this layer that turn to small scales in the fixer. Waiting, this scales be settled at the bottom of the bottle. At this moment you can discard most of the fixer carefully to no shake the silver particles from the bottom. With the rest (the fixer with all the silver particles), you have to filter with a coffee paper filter. After the filter is dry, you can see solid small corns. It have strong fixer smells and for sure is more than only silver. For the moment I’m collecting and when I get a significant quantity I will worry about how to convert it in money, but for the moment I reduce the amount of silver that goes to environment.
I really love your content. Please keep up the good work! Speaking of silver recovery, I'm considering setting up a darkroom for fun, but I'm not sure how I can properly dispose of used darkroom chemicals. Can you talk about that in a future video?
I just used a battery charger to perform straight electrolysis on my spent fixer, and silver would precipitate out. Filter and wash that, dry it, and store in a capped vessel for later. Still have a couple of ounces which I plan to give to a silver jeweler to play with.
When i was working at a minilab we had a cartridge system. When we sent it in we got something like $400 bucks back. This thing was a 3 gallon cartridge system that i don't think exists anymore.
@@TheNakedPhotographer it was some weird pump into what resembled a fiberglass scuba tank thing. This was maybe 13 years ago. We only changed it once the 8 months i was there, but it worked on the same principles as the kodak system. Think it weighed 50 lbs, might have been 5 gallons at least. Don't remember the name of the maker, but do remember the manager showing me the invoice as we were all curious. Fun job before moving to the next place for college. All the free c41 processing i wanted as it kept the chems moving. Think i did 60 rolls for myself while i was there. Definitely spoiled with a decent fuji scanner. We even did some very expired aps for a customer too since we still had a working cartridge puller.
I have a question for you. I used a x-ray fixer machine for 20 years, but now a guy gave me some x-ray films that he had burned. How is the best way to recover the silver from this?
Pro tip:
A: Keep all of your developed black and white prints that would otherwise be discarded, i.e. test prints
B: Use E6, C41 or RA4 bleach to convert back to silver halides
C: Then fix the silver out. Recovers all of the silver in the paper, not just the unexposed silver. This works on film too.
Just ran across this almost a year later. But also: Save your film leaders! Soak them in fixer to remove the silver, and that adds to it. My grad school photo program used to do that to collect extra silver.
I have to say (as I wear your Kodak-leaning film t-shirt) once again that I think you are honestly producing some of the best content on our craft out there. I seem to spend many minutes each night lately "coming up to speed" with something I thought I knew pretty well. Please, keep it up.
Send me a photo of yourself wearing the shirt in the darkroom!
never heard of this before. I will most definitely use this. Thank you so much for making these videos even if the target audience is quite small.
there is also a third method, which is very simple and spectacular: put the silver-saturated solution in a clean glass bottle and add to the solution a little bit of developer: you will immediately see the metallic silver precipitate in nanoparticles and coat the walls of the glass bottle :)
for environmental reasons, I suggest you to use an hydroquinone-free developer
I’ve not heard of that method. Can you recover the silver for refining?
The Naked Photographer
yes, you just have to shake the bottle in order to break the silver coating on the walls. the coating must be fairly thick (more or less like an aluminum foil), otherwise it will stay attached to the walls. I think you can also try to scratch it, as in the electroplating process.
the obtained silver will appear almost black, with a metallic mirror look if it deposits on a perfectly smooth surface (the glass of the bottle)
once you filter the silver from the fixer solution, you can wash it in clean water to further remove unwanted salts.
I forgot to mention that, in order for the process to work, your solution should be alcaline (otherwise the activity of the developer is null). so maybe you have to use some carbonate if you have an acid fixer (I use an alcaline fixer and it works perfectly). I think you can also use ascorbic acid (regular vitamin C) as the reducing agent, together with the sodium carbonate (washing soda).
thanks for your very well made videos!
@@federicomuciaccia9191
Sir can you help me to recovre silver from fixer solution but with elecrolyse???
@@coupablesass1066 what are exactly your needs and available tools?
@@federicomuciaccia9191 can xe talk on whats or fb?? For more details
I hope you do a follow-up video with your savings.
Hello Naked Photographer, It's me, John ... and I'm sorry to say the silver magnet is no longer being manufactured or sold. The company that I sold them for closed shop during the pandemic. BUT. ... someone who worked there continues to manufacture trickle tanks, and I still distribute those, so if people are interested that's still an option. Thanks for the videos !!
Good to hear from you, John! Thanks for the update.
Well that’s a bummer…I need something to either separate or dispose of some photo fixer solution that I ended up with from someone that left it at a house they sold
As a silver refiner i approve this video
Many years ago I worked as an aerial photographer doing mapping photographer using a giant camera that used 10 inch roll film, all black and white. We had an electronic silver recovery system there. I don't remember the details of what it looked like, but I do remember seeing an actual nugget of silver that broke free of the anode.* I imagine there were impurities in it.
*Useless trivia of the day: I just looked up anode and cathode, and the terminology is actually flip-flopped depending on the type of equipment. If it's a consumer of electricity, like a motor, the anode is positive. If the equipment is a producer of power (a battery, generator, solar cell, etc.) then the anode is negative.
I used to do the same thing for DNR washington ,If i knew then what i know now
I always remembered it this way, cathode-has the word cat in it, Black is negative, black cat, cat-thode!
I have noticed another way.
I use PET bottles to store chemicals and I noticed that an old fixer solution stored for long time, formed a thin black layer over the bottle walls. Because PET is flexible I only needed squeeze and press bottle walls to remove this layer that turn to small scales in the fixer. Waiting, this scales be settled at the bottom of the bottle. At this moment you can discard most of the fixer carefully to no shake the silver particles from the bottom. With the rest (the fixer with all the silver particles), you have to filter with a coffee paper filter.
After the filter is dry, you can see solid small corns. It have strong fixer smells and for sure is more than only silver.
For the moment I’m collecting and when I get a significant quantity I will worry about how to convert it in money, but for the moment I reduce the amount of silver that goes to environment.
I really love your content. Please keep up the good work! Speaking of silver recovery, I'm considering setting up a darkroom for fun, but I'm not sure how I can properly dispose of used darkroom chemicals. Can you talk about that in a future video?
Where I am from we have local disposers for chemical products, who offer to dispose all types of chemical waste for free.
Local laws vary too much to give general advice.
I just used a battery charger to perform straight electrolysis on my spent fixer, and silver would precipitate out. Filter and wash that, dry it, and store in a capped vessel for later. Still have a couple of ounces which I plan to give to a silver jeweler to play with.
can you elaborate?
If i was to lay my fixer out on a tray in the sun and the water evaporates can i pull the silver out that way?
Do you have some experience with steel wool methond? At the firstglance it's not very good, due to corrosion of steel...
How can we precipitate it meant that by what chemical?
video on how to extract the silver from the steel wool yourself?
When i was working at a minilab we had a cartridge system. When we sent it in we got something like $400 bucks back. This thing was a 3 gallon cartridge system that i don't think exists anymore.
That sounds like the Kodak system. How often did you send them in?
@@TheNakedPhotographer it was some weird pump into what resembled a fiberglass scuba tank thing. This was maybe 13 years ago. We only changed it once the 8 months i was there, but it worked on the same principles as the kodak system. Think it weighed 50 lbs, might have been 5 gallons at least. Don't remember the name of the maker, but do remember the manager showing me the invoice as we were all curious. Fun job before moving to the next place for college. All the free c41 processing i wanted as it kept the chems moving. Think i did 60 rolls for myself while i was there. Definitely spoiled with a decent fuji scanner. We even did some very expired aps for a customer too since we still had a working cartridge puller.
Do you know about CPAC Equipment Inc? Still selling silver recovery units and cartridges.
I have a question for you. I used a x-ray fixer machine for 20 years, but now a guy gave me some x-ray films that he had burned. How is the best way to recover the silver from this?
What do you mean burned? Like actually set on fire?
Bleach
HOW CAN SILVER PRECEPTS FROM FIXER BY QUICK REACTION SIR
The magnet is no longer available.