This is my first post!:
The answer is yes, you can melt it down, and certain impurities will rise to the surface and some will burn off. The consternation will be if there are other things hanging around that have a high melting temp in the melt. They get caught up in your melt and contaminate it.
A question is: what would you want to with your ingot? If you want to roll it out or make something of it, I would not recommend it. It will likely crack and cause more than a few problems.
If you want an ingot and think it is cool (like I sometimes do with scrap gold) and wave it around until you have enough to refine... go for it!
I do send my scrap silver as is, un melted, un pasteurized to the refiner.
This is my first post!:
The answer is yes, you can melt it down, and certain impurities will rise to the surface and some will burn off. The consternation will be if there are other things hanging around that have a high melting temp in the melt. They get caught up in your melt and contaminate it.
A question is: what would you want to with your ingot? If you want to roll it out or make something of it, I would not recommend it. It will likely crack and cause more than a few problems.
If you want an ingot and think it is cool (like I sometimes do with scrap gold) and wave it around until you have enough to refine... go for it!
I do send my scrap silver as is, un melted, un pasteurized to the refiner.