To Nenah and others discussing this: It kinda surprises me that it has come up.
Back in the early days we were taught to use a "pinch" of salt (NaCl) or a drop or two of salt solution in our brew vessels as a "starter" to get the process going more quickly. Baking soda was also a suggested alternative. The result was a process that worked at high current and very rapidly, producing large particles that often settled out after a few days or weeks. In only took a few minutes to produce a batch, and your electrodes never had a chance to collect any "fluff." The recipes you found online commonly stated that you would get about "1ppm per minute." It was quite exciting to watch, in fact, with all the bubbling and whisps of stuff coming off the electrodes. A lot of people used this method for a long time, and some still do. It was the first process I learned, and I used it for a year or two. It worked and was part and parcel of the popularization of Colloidal Silver in the modern era. Generally, people started moving towards using only distilled water when they began examining the particle size issue. There was some concern that the larger particles presented an increased risk of argyria, though that effect was never demonstrated. (Of course, now there's Stan, the Senate candidate.) There was also concern that the use of a "starter" produced other compounds (like silver chloride or carbonate), at least in the early stages of the process, that could be harmful in and of themselves. This was never proved to be a real concern, given the low toxicity and concentration of the likely by-products. (Except in Stan's case, of course! <sigh>) Nonetheless, people started working to understand the process in pure distilled water, leading to countless experiments in current limiting, other voltage ranges, AC vs. DC, polarity switching, and so on. All this is somewhat apart from the issue of pH. Adding buffers to the CS *after* production will still effect the ionic portion, likely leading to some colorful displays along the way as your silver ions precipitate and agglomerate into particles of silver salts. Certainly worth study. Perhaps a way can be found to balance the pH without compromising the silver component? One other thing I can suggest, if you're interested in the utility of these methods, is that *very low* concentrations of production additives were never explored to my satisfaction. They *might* prove beneficial to ease-of-production and reproduceability with minimal impact on safety or effectiveness. Who knows, eh? For the sake of the newcomers and lurkers, please understand that for now, at least, standard practice is to use only distilled water. That's your bed-time story for today. G'night boys and girls! <grin> Be well, Mike D. [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [mdev...@eskimo.com ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. Instructions for unsubscribing may be found at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
