exploding Silver

Hi guys,

I was casting some silver today after spending a lot of time trying to find the correct heat from torches. Finally I managed to get the silver to flow and was about to pour into a small graphite mold, when the silver exploded, and splattered everywhere, in about 100 pieces of tiny particles. Carpet is destroyed and some holes in a workbench. Luckily enough I got out of the way in time....

But now I am wondering why this happened. Has anyone experience this before.

Before i went to pour the silver from crucible to mold i was heating both at the same time with the torch.

Then tilted it into graphite mold and exploded.

any help on this would be much appreciated, as afraid to go back into studio now.....

eamon

what were you heating the silver in ?

in a crucible

oh wow....that sounds dangerous!

Sorry Eamon, that sounds horribly frightening - thank goodness it's only burns to the carpet and workbench.

I can only think that perhaps although you were heating the mold that it simply wasn't hot enough at the point you poured the silver into it. I've only ever seen it done in youtube videos, but seem to recall a warning that if the mold wasn't hot enough then the sudden temperature change could cause the metal to explode.

Did it explode when it touched the mold ?

It all seems to point to the presence or introduction of water.

As Dennis said,

Hi Guys,

thanks for the replies.

THinking back on it now, the graphite mold may have been wet, and I didn't heat it for long enough before pouring the molten silver from the crucible.

Lesson learned. It really shook me, as everywhere the silver splattered started to smolder.

Going to look at changing some of my solder area, to make it a little safer.

thanks for the replies, sorry for late reply, was out in the sun...