Subject: Re: Silvering

From: [email-masked] (Steve Rayner)
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 11:16:36 GMT

Perhaps my chemical terminology may have been incorrect.  But I have heard
many tales of people going to lunch, only to return to a demolished lab, 
because they failed to safely dispose of the activated solution first.

As a note of interest, the old clock & watch dial makers in England used to
test the silver chloride solution by tasting it!  When there was no taste 
of salt or acid it was ready for use.  My great grandfather was a London 
watchmaker in the last century. My grandmother helped in the shop as a 
young girl.  She said the dial makers all had black tongues.  I don't know
how much truth there is to this, but I  believe the activated solution will 
blacken skin. 
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     MY SECRET IS OIL OF HARLEY DAVIDSON !      Steve Rayner
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From: [email-masked] (Don Berry)
Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 10:19:56 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
[email-masked] (Steve Rayner) wrote:
<snip>
>how much truth there is to this, but I  believe the activated solution will 

The unactivated silver solutions will blacken skin.  Silver nitrate gets
on/in your skin, gets reduced one way or another (not that hard) and you
get a silver colloid right there.  Think of it as skin as photographic
plate.  In undergraduate chem lab you can usually assign a "technique"
score for some labs after looking over the students' hands. :)
-Don Berry
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[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (J. Kimberlin)
Date: 3 May 1996 15:54:14 -0700

>because they failed to safely dispose of the activated solution first.

Some students used to make this stuff and inject it into door locks at 
the college dorm, or dribble it in the hallway.  The results were worthy 
of great mirth to some, but generally capable of injuring someone.

>how much truth there is to this, but I  believe the activated solution will 

Silver nitrate solution will turn your skin black, positively, no rumor.  
To get rid of it you have to daub on potassium permanganate solution.  
When you see the black turn to bluish red, you then put on sodium sulfite 
to get rid of the permanganate color.  We had a young girl in the lab at 
college that had dribbled silver nitrate on her hands.  There was a dance 
that night, so we did the permanganate thing.  She was nearly crying when 
she saw what the permanganate did to her hands.  After the sulfite, all 
was peachy again.

JerryK