Interesting Source for Sheet Silver

[Majorjoel]

I've been wanting to find a real silver eagle to use for a cheek inlay on a future rifle project. Yesterday I stopped at a garage sale on my way north to Macinaw City. This old lady had a whole table full of silver platters, cups, and bowls. Everything was marked 3.00 dollars per piece! Looks like I'll be well stocked in raw materials for making my own eagle! Practice makes perfect!

[fm tim]

Be careful - may be silver plate

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I will almost guarantee that it is plated silver, not solid.  Check out the touch marks on the underside of the pieces - it'll say so.

[Majorjoel]

I don't know but the cup has this marking...

[LRB]

  In my experience, sterling is usually marked as such. If not marked Sterling, it usuall isn't, it is plated. Scratch it deep where it won't show, and see if you find copper, or brass in the scratch.

[Majorjoel]

Thanks Wick, I cut the base off of the trophy cup and found no other color but silver all the way through. It should straighten out easily and give me a lot of material to work with. If this is the only piece that turns out pure, I'm still a happy camper!

[rich pierce]

I love a good garage sale find.  Well done!

[JTR]

It'll probably make for an interesting practice piece,
but,
it still might not be silver.

Good silverplate was done over copper, but the less expensive stuff has a base material of some sort of white metal...... Zinc or something like that.
John

[Rolf]

Silver weighs 10.49 grams per cubic cm . Take piece of the metal, drop it in a measuring cup full with water. Measure the water displaced. This will give you the volume of the metal. Weigh the metal and divide it the volum measured. If its sterling silver, you should get around 10.3 - 10.5

Best regards

Rolfkt

[Pete G.]

Seems like I remember reading somewhere that what we call German Silver was developed as a base metal for silver plated utensils. A jewelry store should be able to tell you what you have.

[Jesse168]

Take it to your local pawn shop.  They can tell you real quick whether it's silver plate or sterling silver.  They keep the testing liquids on hand just for that.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Yup!  I once thought I'd make a cool thumb piece out of the handle of a "silver" spoon.  It was consistently silver straight through, but German Silver with a pure silver plate.  I was very disappointed.

[heinz]

Bare in mind that "Sheffield Plate," a lamination of silver over copper achieved by heating, goes back to 1743 or so   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_plate
 It holds up well to a reasonable ammount of hammering and reshaping.  I know nothing about the use of Sheffield Plate on a firearm.

[J.D.]

I recently acquired a coupla silver quarters, in change, that will make nice thumb pieces and maybe a little bling on SW Va rifle.

I haven't had any luck finding sterling silver items at yard sales or flea markets. Everything I have found at those venues is plate. The good stuff is marked as "Stirling" or .999%. Everything else is plate.

God bless

[TPH]

Captjoel, sorry to rain on your parade but it is silver plate over base metal.

[Majorjoel]

Drats, Foiled Again!!

[Tim Crosby]

   Hit it with a propane torch, if it melts easily you may be able to use it for nose caps, knife bolster, horn tips. Etc…

 Tim C. 

[pathfinder]

Once found 16# of Dupont 2&3f at a garage sale,4-2# cans and the rest in 1# cans,sign on the table said $10.00,Iasked each or for all,She said all,darn near broke my arm gettin' my wallet out! LOVE garage sales!

[Dan'l 1946]

It does look like silverplate. Polish it up a bit and sell it for $4.00 a piece and use the proceeds to buy some pure silver from Dixie or maybe Track. An ounce is worth spot price plus a small profit to the seller. You can also buy bullion from many coin dealers--guaranteed 99.99%  pure--for about $21.00 per  ounce as of Friday. An ounce goes a long way and pure silver is very malleable. You can make a nice sideplate out of an ounce of silver and maybe have enough left over for a small thumbpiece.

Dan

[Old Ford2]

Hey guys, if I can add to the fracus.
Sterling silver is  92.5% silver
Bullion will run 99.9-99.99% silver.
Silver is neat stuff to work with, it solders well, it bends well, it carves well.
What else could you want?
Old Ford

[RobertS]

You might trying asking around at pawn shops that buy silver goods for smelting.  I was hanging around at a local pawn shop one day talking to the owner about his business, and he mentioned that he does a healthy amount of business buying precious metals and reselling to a smelter that comes in periodically, and I asked what kind of stuff he had.  He pulled out a box and showed me some sterling Christmas ornaments that could have been cut into inlays, and I bought an 1804 Spanish dollar for $20, and he had other bits and peices of sterling and coin silver.  There's no telling what might turn up in those kind of places. 

[Randy Hedden]

Joel,

I have dealt in antiques for over 40 years and have handled many sterling and silver plated pieces.  On old large pieces sterling is usually stamped sterling and has hallmarks that indicate sterling silver content, the maker, the year made and where it was made.  Sometimes the piece will be to small for the sterling mark, but will have the hallmark stamps. Many older pieces will be stamped coin silver or simply coin which indicates a silver content, but less than the .925% content of sterling.  On older pieces the sterling mark and the hallmarks are usually small and marked on the bottom rim, but, depending on the size of the piece, the stamping may be in the middle of the bottom of the piece.  I don't pretend to know all the hundreds and hundreds of hallmarks, but a rampant lion hallmark stamp indicates sterling.  You can look up the rest of the hallmarks when you get back home. 

Plated pieces are commonly marked EPSN which stands for Electro Plated Nickel Silver.  The base metal is nickel with a thin silver plating.

When you wrote that you cut the piece in two and it was silver looking metal all the way through, I suspect you have a piece of EPSN.

Keep looking at the garage sales and you will find some true sterling pieces.  I buy a lot of clearly marked sterling at garage sales and thrift stores.  I also buy a lot of 14K to 18K jewelry at the same places for next to nothing.  Some people don't realize that the pieces they are selling are gold or sterling and then others just don't care.  I just recently bought a set of six silver teaspoons, that were marked "coin", for three dollars for all six.  I found these in a new antique shop and I suspect the dealer doesn't know anything about coin silver.  A couple of weeks ago at a local church flea market my wife picked up an 18K gold bracelet with approximately 2 karats of diamonds at a local church flea market for the grand sum of $10.  It's out there if you know what you are looking for.

Randy Hedden

[whitebear]

I have worked in a pawn shop and seen all kinds of dodges on cheep jewelry to make it look more expensive.  At one time we had a rash of bracelets and necklaces that had .925 stamped on one side of the clasp.  After doing some experimenting we found that that piece of the clasp was the only sterling on it the remainder was other silver colored metal.  Beware.