|
PROJECT CENTRAL |
KEN-WELCH.COM |
COMMENTARY LISTING |
Making a Batch of Colloidal Silver Solution
Now that the silver bars are neatly positioned, and the batteries are hooked up to the connectors, the next step is to add water. I always use distilled water because I don't want any other chemicals, minerals or metals adding unknown factors to the end result. In an emergency, you would simply use the cleanest water you could find, including tap water. In the woods, germs would be killed by the C.S., but I rather doubt it is any good against parasites. So boiled water would be the way to go.
Pour the water in slowly so you don't disturb the positioning of the silver bars. Allow the level to come about three quarters of the way up the sides of the silver. The important thing is not to allow the water to get near the connecting points. If the connectors are in the water, then you will have metal from the wires, the solder, or the hardware being zapped into the water along with the silver. That could create a colloidal mixture of unknown metals you may not want. So keep the hardware out of the water!
Reflections and natural distortion make the details a bit hard to see in this photo, but the soldered area on these silver bars is above the water line.
With the batteries already connected, the generator begins working as soon as you add water. But your first impression will be that nothing is happening. This is almost true. Pure distilled water does not conduct electricity very well. You might see some small bubbles forming and that's about it. It's a good time to take a coffee break.
After you've made some colloidal silver of your own, you can simply add a teaspoon of it to the next batch. This will make the water nicely conductive, and you'll save ten minutes or so.
Here you can see small bubbles forming on the left electrode:
Eventually you might see some tiny wisps of something near the bottom of one of the silver pieces, but the fact is that pure colloidal silver is completely transparent. I'll tell you how to get that golden brown color below. But since this is your very first batch, I think you should be able to see for yourself that your magical device is actually working.
To TEST your silver maker, drop five or six individual grains of table salt into the water.
Soon you will see a tiny wisp of white "smoke" beginning to drift downward from a corner of one of the silver bars. The smoke is silver chloride. Silver loves chlorine, and some of your silver particles are combining with the chlorine in the table salt. Silver chloride is visible. Seeing the white smoke lets you see with your own eyes that your silver maker is actually putting a huge amount of silver into the solution.
The longer the process runs, the more white "smoke" will appear in the water. Unfortunately, silver chloride has no healing properties. Once you've enjoyed watching the process, you will want to throw this batch away and start over. You can save one or two drops to make the next batch of distilled water more conductive, or simply figure that the batch will take ten minutes longer than this test run.
When I chose three batteries for my generator, totaling 27 volts, it was because I wanted the process to start quickly. Once it is up to speed, though, I prefer to cut back to just two, which reduces the power to 18 volts. If you remove a battery from this circuit, however, you will stop the process entirely. To keep it going, you must supply an electrical bridge across the two empty snaps on that third battery connector. You could stand there and hold any piece of conductive metal so it touched both snaps, but if an extra connector came in the package when you bought them, it is a ready-made bridge. Simply twist the ends of the two wires together (and tape them), then snap it onto the empty connector in place of the battery that was there.
Here you see that I've left the test batch running. You can see that a lot of silver is going into the water. So how much is enough? How long should you let the process continue?
The longer it runs, the more silver you get in solution. For your first real batch (no salt) I would suggest you let it run for twenty minutes. Since the solution should remain releatively clear, you don't have much to assist you in estimating how strong it is. However, if you simply taste a teaspoon of it, and get a pretty strong taste that is rather like chalk with metallic overtones, you've got a nice, strong colloidal silver solution. I've been told this corresponds to about 10-15 parts of silver per million parts of water, or 10-15 ppm.
I've never known this strength not to work as an efficient germ-killer in the gut, and this is generally the strength that I would use for food poisoning, when I may drink a third of a cup or more in one shot.
To stop the process, first disconnect one of the batteries. That breaks the circuit and no more current will flow. Remove the silver elements and you now have a nice batch of colloidal silver. This is the test batch after twenty minutes. A pure batch would be clear:
Clean the silver right away
As you can see in the photo above, the silver elements are now badly discolored. The black material seems to be silver oxide. If this were iron we would call it rust. Since it's silver, we call it tarnish. At this point, though, it is not bonded to the surface and most of it will scrub right off with a stiff brush under running water. I use a non-scratching scouring powder (Bon Ami, or Bar Keepers Friend) to gently remove the remainder. Actually, it doesn't matter if you scratch the silver—you've got plenty. But you want to do this right away because the longer you wait the more difficult it will be to scrub away.
On the other silver bar you can see a brown color, and I suspect this is that one part in a thousand that is not silver. It will come off easily as well.
Some of that black silver tarnish may also be in the water. Eventually it will sink to the bottom and may even bond slightly with the glass itself. It is not harmful, but if you were producing C.S. commercially you would be wanting to filter it out simply to improve the appearance of your product.
You want to clean the silver when it gets dark like this, even if you're not finished. Obviously, a coating on the silver elements will reduce efficiency.
Potentially, traces of hydrochloric acid (chlorine!) in the stomach can weaken your silver solution before it get's into the intestinal tract, so you try to use your silver on an empty stomach, and you take a fairly large amount. I'll usually go for a third of cup, up to a half a cup at once for food poisoning. (Some newspapers prefer to call it "stomach flu.") This seems to deliver plenty of silver to the intestinal tract, kidneys and bladder. This would NOT be a daily dose unless you were fighting massive infection!
I continue to learn about colloidal silver, and recently found out that a very tiny amount of pure vitamin C crystals (just a few grains) can be added to the clear silver solution. I don't really understand the chemistry, but I'm told that the silver ions—too small to be colloids—will clump together and become colloids. The benefit is that the silver will become visible, with a beautiful golden color. Stronger solutions will be darker. You can use the darkness of the color to estimate how many parts per million you have.
Colloidal silver solution will remain good for a long time if kept away from light. Commercial preparations come in dark bottles, but I find that keeping it in a bottle inside a kitchen cupboard that is normally closed will do just fine. Nonetheless, I have an impression that freshly made solution is more potent. This may be entirely psychological. Still, if my CS is three or four months old, I usually find myself making up a fresh batch if the need for a strong, antibiotic punch arises.
Many people are concerned that silver will kill beneficial bacteria in the gut, just as an antibiotic would. I have tested this twice, by adding a teaspoon of strong silver to a six ounce jar of live yogurt culture before the jar was placed in the yogurt maker for the 10-12 hour "incubation" period. Each time I've ended up with a perfectly normal container of finished yogurt. The silver did NOT kill the beneficial bacteria. In fact, it didn't even slow it down! Of course, for a healthy gut you still want to be taking yogurt - or probiotics capsules fairly often, and especially if you've been ill.
I have very specific uses for colloidal silver solution, and normally only use it when I'm confident that I need to kill something. I've also been known to take a teaspoon (only) on an empty stomach, to see if I can get some silver built up in my system, but I'm not sure that small amounts actually get through to other parts of the body - mostly because I have no way to test. Silver is good on bandages and in wounds. Essentially it's a harmless sterilizing agent that works beautifully, but only if it is in physical contact with germs you want to destroy. Other people who have studied it much more than I can give you a broader picture of it's value and many uses.