Harvest Day! Was actually yesterday (day 10) and it took a bit longer than expected. Had to do multiple hot distilled water rinses then test w hydrochloric to make sure all silver nitrate was removed and it’s legitimate work getting that all done correctly/carefully and then drying it.
Definitely thanks for all the suggestions, I’ll be trying a few things for my next run like not drilling bottom holes in the anode basket and I’m going to raise the next Dacron filter bag up a bit so it’s a bit further from the bottom. The bowl I’m using comes w an awesome lid btw that has a 2nd center circular lid that opens independent from the main lid so I may try propping that up a bit as well, not sure. The crystals ended up chunky enough so most of the wispy stuff that grew initially did thicken up after a few days. I had no idea what weight I was looking at and although I knew roughly what I fed in I still need to do exact calcs on how much I added. The bowl walls not growing much crystal is still a bit of a mystery but will try voltage/current adjustments to see if I can change that.
Also yes I did use straight sterling shot for this, from what I’ve read I’ll need to watch for faster copper saturation and things like palladium/other possible contaminants etc but I wanted to try this for myself (sterling shot) and will get the crystal assayed to see if I need to cement first next time. If I’m able to save the cementing first I’ll stick with sterling feed stock, it’s just easier/more economical. End total was 764.62g which is about as much as I fed in. There’s a few small undissolved pieces in the dirty anode basket but maybe 5-10g is all. I plan to make a bit more pure silver nitrate with some of this then will top up with the used nitrate. I think I can push out another 500g or so that way. Thanks again for the help guys!