Hello, everyone,
This is my first post here aside from my introduction post, so if this is in the wrong section please let me know.
I am in the U.S., IDK how relevant this is, but yeah.
Anyways, myself and a buddy of mine have been making our own hand poured bars and rounds for a couple months now (on and off)-- and it's turned from a hobby into a bit of a small business, primarily making custom bars for friends. For example a bar with a custom stamped message for an anniversary gift, that kind of stuff.
i was curious for those who either make their own hand-pours or collect a lot of hand-pours about purity and testing.
When I had first looked into this I was pretty shocked that people on various other places (subreddits, etc) say they have poured and sold many pieces without ever getting anything tested. Is that common, or am I just getting a weird sample?
So-- short story:
When we had first started pouring bars (high density graphite crucibles, and molds) I had taken a few to an LCS along with a few hand poured bars from pretty well known companies.
I got readings all over the place from sigma machines (I do not own a sigma machine, myself, as I am what you would call "working poor")-- one LCS said they were fine silver, one said they were not even .925, after a post-sigma "fail" acid test which was done out of my line of sight which I knew could not be the case; so I feel like the second place was just trying to get me out of there as they were extremely busy, and the guy had an attitude for the the first moment. (Keep in mind I brought in a handful of bars from different companies as well, so giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe their machine was not calibrated correctly and/or the acid had gone bad as I had tested it with acid myself and all good on my end).
So I went to a pawn shop with a sigma machine and had the same thing happen to me (minus the "bad" acid test.. they did one but it came up as "at least .925"), this includes the other bars tat I did not make.
So I took all of the stuff to a huge pawn shop a bit out of the way that I knew had an XRF machine and everything tested as it should (.999 fine or higher), as well as a guy doing a favor for me and sending one off in his batch to get assayed, as I do not have the volume for local refineries to work with me, and that bar came back as being fine silver.
*story over*
So I thought this was all sort of odd.
I looked a bit more into how sigma machines actually work and found some anecdotal evidence that they can be finicky with hand poured silver.
Was wondering if any of you guys have had similar experiences with sigma machines?
the main worry here is if I sell someone something, they take it to a sigma and it doesn't test right. So, obviously not a good thing to happen, but I'm not sure how common this kind of mismatch is with testing, or if the guys just wanted me out of the shop for some reason, etc.
I was very much taken back when the guy told me the sigma was not reading it as fine silver as I know I had melted down fine silver from a reputable dealer, no other metals in the crucible or molds-- but then taking the exact pieces to get XRF tested and they come up as fine silver (plus the bar that was drilled and assayed coming up as fine silver)... it's just odd to me.
I guess subject number 2-- as far as melting down silver shot/grain vs bullion bars/rounds.
I've bought some silver shot from two different reputable sources, and I have also melted down "bargain bin" silver rounds-- both test at least .999 on the XRF test.
I was curious what those who pour generally use or prefer, and why?
I see most shot is labeled "999+" which I gather is at least .999 fine, but could be more fine. Is that pretty much the gist of things?
I can generally get 999+ shot for a bit cheaper than melting down rounds, though it's not a huge difference in price.
Does it really make a difference?
I guess I'm just interested to hear any input about the stuff with the Sigma and XRF tests, as well as with the Silver Shot versus Silver bars/round for melting.
P.S. Sorry if this sounded like a bit of a ramble or a bit disjointed, for some reason wording this was a bit hard to keep concise.
Any input/discussion on these topics would be greatly appreciated.