Here is a little how-to video on cleaning your bench and sending your scraps to the refiner from @meritmadeworkshop - “Recycle ♻️ your silver! (Be sure to get all the way to step 6. It’s the best step of all.)
First a couple definitions.
👉Filings, scrap, and mess ups are pieces of silver that you generate throughout the making process. These are the little bits you cut off, the glitter that collects in your bench and the mess ups that are unsalvageable. They are easy to collect and generally the majority of the material is silver.
👉Sweeps are the small particles of silver dust that are stuck in polishing filters, vacuumed up from the floor, and imbedded in your sand paper. Sweeps could potentially be anywhere and are often more other material (vacuum bag, filter, etc) than silver.<br>•••<br>@metalsmithsociety has a super good post about recycling sweeps. If you didn’t see it, you should definitely go check it out.
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In addition to recycling your sweeps, you should also be recycling your filings, mess-ups, and scraps. In this video, I walk you through how to capture and organize these materials to make the most money.
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I send mine to @riogrande. I spend quite a bit of money with them already, and I use my scrap money as a credit toward my next purchase. I would say I average about $350 every 3 months or so.” THIS 👆my goal is to talk about this as much as possible because even if you are just doing a little metal work for fun you should save every piece of dust! Otherwise you are throwing away money! Also so cool that the metal gets recycled! Win/win! Thanks for letting me share this fun video! #recycledmetal #makingjewelry