Silver Plated Items....

[sailcaptain]

I while back I started a post about finding “Hidden Finds” while cleaning out an uncle’s home. it include some bullets, WW II Cleaning supplies, a couple of presses etc.
Nothing of real value but usable stuff.
Well the home has finally sold and I went back to collect a couple of boxes of stuff I left because of time and limited truck space at the time.
Well now I have 2 boxes of dented up silver plated trays, candle holders, candy dishes...just silver plated stuff. It’s like a big scratch and dent sale. Even a couple of pewter steins (probably use for beer) during an Oktoberfest celebration that show where he must have banged the the things together in a toast.
Aside from some some of the stems and bases they’re all metal, no fillers.
Is there any benefit to me melting it all down and pouring out ingots? What about the melting points of various metals?
I know others use pewter and have trouble with the added fillers, but the plates sound pretty straight forward.
I’m not trying to be like The Lone Ranger and make silver bullets, but the idea of it is pretty cool.

Any thoughts?

[bangerjim]

Separate the pewter items. Melt them separate. Or drink beer from them! I love pewter steins.

The rest will be base metals, usually brass or pot metal. Sometimes in the olde days they silver plated pewter. Only way to find out is to try melting a bit with a propane torch. if it melts like lead, it pewter underneath.

You can also scratch/grind thru the plating and apply some hydrochloric acid (pool acid). If it bubbles it is a zinc alloy (pot metal. Not worth anything.

banger

[farmbif]

at the scrap yard I had experience at silver plated stuff got thrown in the brass bins, after a worker ground through a spot to take a look at what's under the plating.
goodwill would send us truckloads of the stuff

[William Yanda]

If there is any marked "Quadruplate" it may be comparable to pewter. Give it the bend test, then the tink to see if it rings or is a dull clunk like pewter. There are two schools of thought about the silver when it is melted. I believe it goes into solution and may act like copper to give your boolits some extra toughness. At any rate they would be more effective against werewolves and zombies. The actual amount of silver in the plating, often mostly worn away is minute, equaling a fraction of a percent of a percent.

[kevin c]

Years ago there was a company that sold cast bullets advertised as being “the real silver bullet”, claiming their product was better (harder?) than the competition because theirs contained an (unspecified) amount of silver. Turns out that a lot of lead bearing ores contain silver, in quantities large enough that recovering and selling it separate from the lead adds substantially to the bottom line.