How do you actually make powdered silver?

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay. So, the material component for making holy water in 3.x is 5 pounds of powdered silver. (Several other spells also use it as a component.) Along with gemstones, this is sort of a given and 99% of the time, the method by which this is acquired doesn't matter.

This is the 1%.

So how do you actually MAKE powered silver?

I ask because in the quest I'm writing currently, the (low-level) PCs are on a small island, and will likely want a load of unholy water (same difference, component-wise). As a small colony isn't likely to have much to hand (the temples probably have some), there just so happens to be a silver mine nearby. (Also, silver pieces are another obvious source.)

But this besg the question - how DO you make a metal into a powder? (Or perhaps it should be "how could you?") Alchemally? If anyone knows how that might be done in the real world, I'm all ears! Or would you grind it? Could you, say, use a grindstone to grind it into a powder? I really don't know.

Suggestions - especially if anyone happens to know a real-world process - would be greatly welcomed.

[Mastikator]

Take a silver ingot. File it down. That's it.

[Knaight]

Filing down an ingot with a fine file is probably the best way to do it that makes sense in setting - modern methods tend to involve a fair amount of chemistry, precise temperature control, and/or machinery.

[Kane0]

Was going to say disintegrate, but that seems inefficient...

[Grod_The_Giant]

It might not be elementally "pure" silver-- silver nitrate is a powder, for instance, though I don't know how easy it would be to produce with pre-modern technology. Wikipedia says silver + nitric acid, which my Dragonriders of Pern books suggest isn't hard to get, but my chemistry knowledge is drawing a blank on.

If you want a viable method... maybe drip molten silver into water? That should get nice small globules, at least. If you get the water cold enough, or maybe heat them up again and hit them with an ice spell or something, you could maybe shatter them?

[Jay R]

With medieval technology, the most straightforward way - and the cheapest - is to take a fine file to some silver. In a world in which that component is needed in fairly large quantities, I assume you can buy exactly the right file for it.

[If I needed to make it here today, I'd use the coarse side of my carborundum sharpening stone.]

[Necroticplague]

1: Acquire silver.
2: Acquire coarse, but tough stone.
3: Rub the two together.
If you can't find something coarse, simply spinning around a tough stone really fast can work. Whatever the people in the region use as a whetstone will probably work.

[Knaight]

With medieval technology, the most straightforward way - and the cheapest - is to take a fine file to some silver. In a world in which that component is needed in fairly large quantities, I assume you can buy exactly the right file for it.

[If I needed to make it here today, I'd use the coarse side of my carborundum sharpening stone.]

It's the cheapest in terms of initial costs, but given just how useful powdered silver is they might have some better options for bulk production. Medieval technology includes a bewildering variety of watermills for all sorts of activities beyond just grinding grain (metalwork, textiles, sawmills, etc.). A rotary file hooked up to a water mill could work really well, and is almost certainly cheaper in the long run, particularly if labor prices are high.

Plus, the idea of a holy water mill is just fun.

[Mastikator]

It's the cheapest in terms of initial costs, but given just how useful powdered silver is they might have some better options for bulk production. Medieval technology includes a bewildering variety of watermills for all sorts of activities beyond just grinding grain (metalwork, textiles, sawmills, etc.). A rotary file hooked up to a water mill could work really well, and is almost certainly cheaper in the long run, particularly if labor prices are high.

Plus, the idea of a holy water mill is just fun.

A big grindstone might work if you really need lots, but it's silver, it's expensive and rare. The fact that it's silver is the bottleneck.

[Knaight]

A big grindstone might work if you really need lots, but it's silver, it's expensive and rare. The fact that it's silver is the bottleneck.

Silver's not really that rare even in real life, and judging by D&D economies it's much more common in D&D-land.

[Mastikator]

Silver's not really that rare even in real life, and judging by D&D economies it's much more common in D&D-land.

In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons.

In 2014 the global production of iron was 3 220 000 000 metric tons.

The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Silver is extremely rare. Those numbers can very well be very different in D&D land, there's no reason to think it should be the same in every setting even. But objectively, silver is rare and expensive.

[Beneath]

On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

While you can make that with a file, grinding several cubic inches of anything to powder with a file sounds like a lot of work. Especially if you're always gonna need more.

[Knaight]

The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Iron is also ridiculously abundant. In 2015 copper was at a mere 19,100,000, at only two orders of magnitude above silver, and that's another metal used in abundance. 2013 figures for tungsten are at about 80,000* (to one sig fig). Nickel in 2015 was only about 2,000,000* tons. Chromite in 2012 was about 25,000* tons. Even aluminum was only 57,600,000 in 2016, and it's a clear second. It takes things like crude oil (usually measured by energy and not mass, but the tonne of oil equivalent works as an approximate mass unit) at a ridiculous 3,850,141,310 toe in 2015 to get towards iron levels. Much rarer than iron isn't rare.

Now, lets look at some rare metals. Iridium manages a whole 3 tonnes of production annually, osmium isn't even tracked reliably but appears to manage less than one tonne annually. Moving into more commercial metals, palladium (which is a really useful catalyst in a lot of chemistry) had a comparatively whopping 215 tonnes produced worldwide.

*These weren't world figures, and as such are approximate sums done by mental math.

[Aotrs Commander]

On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

While you can make that with a file, grinding several cubic inches of anything to powder with a file sounds like a lot of work. Especially if you're always gonna need more.

Five pounds in 3.x/PF; it may be different in later additions of course.

In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons.

In 2014 the global production of iron was 3 220 000 000 metric tons.

The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Silver is extremely rare. Those numbers can very well be very different in D&D land, there's no reason to think it should be the same in every setting even. But objectively, silver is rare and expensive.

Well. Here's the thing. I just crunched the numbers, and the requisite 5 lbs of silver required for Bless (or Curse) Water is 216 cubic cenitmetres (6 x 6 x 6 cm), or little over a 2 inch-cube. (Less than I thought it might be actually.) That's 25 gp's worth apparently, if we beleive the spell. Given that that's a first level spell, and generally holy water is pretty freely available as mundane gear... Yeah, I have to think that silver is rather more abundant in your typical fantasy land.

However, given the ridiculous amounts of gold and size and prevalence of gemstones, this isn't actually that much of a stretch. I mean, heck, if the world in question has fauna from one million years ago plus pterosaurs, dinosaurs and anamalocaris (let alone magic creatures!), I think "precious metals are more common" isn't that much of a stretch...!

Also that said, D&D's "pounds" with regard to equipment and encumberance typically bears very little resemblence (or sanity) to actual real-world item weights and capacities, so we can perhaps take that "5 lbs" with a pinch of salt, come to that.

(And we'll gloss over how much ore it would take to smelt out that much silver, I want the PCs to actually access it...!)



Though, actally, it raises an interesting thought. The currency runs on sestertii, where the 1 sestertius equals 1 gp (with As 1/4 gp and then Quadrans (1/16th gp) further down, and Denarius (4gp) and Aureus (100gp) going up - and sestertii are technically were originally silver (they'd be brass at this point), As and quadrans are bronze, denarius are silver and only aureus are gold). So a) that has some interesting implications to the relative rarity of gold to silver to regular D&D worlds, let alone Earth and b) means the PCs may not be all that keen to be grinding up their coins, since the worth of said coins will not be equivilent to their actual weight...!



I think, then, my initial gut instinct maybe on the right track - the temples may have a special grinding wheel for the specific purpose. (Like the sort you see for sharpening swords in the movies (though I don't know how accurate that actually is, there theory in this case is probably fair.)) Probably peddle powered, in this case. (Of course, if they were on the mainland in Not-Rome, the posh temples would probably have some water powered contraption.)

[Mechalich]

However, given the ridiculous amounts of gold and size and prevalence of gemstones, this isn't actually that much of a stretch. I mean, heck, if the world in question has fauna from one million years ago plus pterosaurs, dinosaurs and anamalocaris (let alone magic creatures!), I think "precious metals are more common" isn't that much of a stretch...!

In D&D you can import metals from the Elemental Plane of Earth or the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mineral where they can be found not only in spectacular abundance but also in pure form. A cleric of sufficient level can even conceivably Planar Ally up a Shaitan and say 'I have this much of x substance and want this much of Y substance, fetch it for me' and pay them off with some of ridiculously high added value like scrolls.

[Martin Greywolf]

On medieval silver prices, standard measuring unit was a mark of silver, clocking at 200 - 300 grams, depending on which one we're talking about. A relatively simple breastplate circa 1400 would cost you 4 of those, so about a kilo of silver, a warhorse cost about 20, so 5 kilos. Now, there were impurities in this, actual silver content was somewhere between 80 - 95 %

While not all of these were paid for in cash (checks in one form or another are a thing since about 1000), many transactions were, and we can find buried pottery with silver coins in them even today - these would be stashes someone left there for a rainy day or when they heard the road was dangerous and wanted to pick up at a later date (operative word being wanted to).

So yeah, silver is still valuable, but not incredibly rare, especially in societies that have yet to mine out their near-surface reserves and are relatively small (medieval population of Europe is something like 50 million, as opposed to 700 million today).

You will still want to collect the powder on your water-powered grindstone, though.

[Yuki Akuma]

You just need a file made of something harder than silver and a lot of manual labour.

[Thrudd]

Grate a chunk of it on a cheese grater made of diamonds.

[Jay R]

In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons.

To put that figure in perspective, that's about 3.5 grams, or 1/8 oz. per person, assuming 7.2 billion in 2015.

[Cealocanth]

So, if you want an alchemical answer to this question, you could take a solution of silver nitrate and suspend a copper rod in it. This will react slowly with the solution and produce hairlike crystals of silver on the outside of the rod over the process of a few hours. These could then be easily crushed by hand to produce a powder. In the middle ages, silver nitrate could be obtained by mixing nitric acid (aqua fortis) with a solution containing both gold and silver.

That is an awfully roundabout way of doing it, though. In a traditional fantasy setting, alchemical reagents are expensive, and labor is cheap.

[Aotrs Commander]

So, if you want an alchemical answer to this question, you could take a solution of silver nitrate and suspend a copper rod in it. This will react slowly with the solution and produce hairlike crystals of silver on the outside of the rod over the process of a few hours. These could then be easily crushed by hand to produce a powder. In the middle ages, silver nitrate could be obtained by mixing nitric acid (aqua fortis) with a solution containing both gold and silver.

So noted. That is something they may be able to do... Though needing a solution with gold and silver in it to start with may be the killer of that option, unfortunately.

That is an awfully roundabout way of doing it, though. In a traditional fantasy setting, alchemical reagents are expensive, and labor is cheap.

Not if everyone else on the island colony is possessed/dominated by a magic sapient virus that the PCs are only immune to because it hasn't adapted to infect Evil creatures yet...!

(Unholy Water - currently - work on it¹, which is why I'm looking into this, as the PCs may want to make a load...! Otherwise, the question would never have been all that important, they likely could have just bought the powdered silver (or the black ops organisation could have acquired them a modest amount). But in this adventure, they are literally on their own.)



¹Where "works" means "will drive it out of the body/kill the current viral cells in the body, but does nothing to prevent reinfection."

[Slipperychicken]

On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

I pity anyone who decides to drink holy water in a dnd universe.

[Mastikator]

Not if everyone else on the island colony is possessed/dominated by a magic sapient virus that the PCs are only immune to because it hasn't adapted to infect Evil creatures yet...!

(Unholy Water - currently - work on it¹, which is why I'm looking into this, as the PCs may want to make a load...! Otherwise, the question would never have been all that important, they likely could have just bought the powdered silver (or the black ops organisation could have acquired them a modest amount). But in this adventure, they are literally on their own.)



¹Where "works" means "will drive it out of the body/kill the current viral cells in the body, but does nothing to prevent reinfection."

Can't the PCs just use an existing grind stone? It's not like grind stones aren't all over the place. They'll probably find several in the nearest village. Or just some lumbermill down the river. Or they could just make one.

[JeenLeen]

I would think grinding silver, as in silver ingots or coins, would work fine. I reckon the purity needed for the spell is about equivalent to the purity needed for coinage. No need for technological or alchemical methods to get a good purity. Likewise, mined silver is probably okay with only the minimal smithing to remove impurities. (I can see saying you'd need to melt it to remove the impurities that rise to the top, just like you'd need to do so to prepare silver to be coin.)

Note that, in most D&D games, a silver weapon is not actually silver, but treated or worked to get a coating of silver (and maybe a special alchemical silver) on it. Thus, silver(ed) weapons likely are not a good source of silver.

[Lord Torath]

I pity anyone who decides to drink holy water in a dnd universe.

No kidding. And just how big is a flask, anyway? A gallon of water is 8 lbs, which I would suspect is several times bigger than a flask (which I imagine as about 8 oz). In which case the silver you are adding to the water is five times the weight of the water itself...

In 2E AD&D, holy water just required three priests praying over an altar for 3 hours and casting a spell each. The 25 gp price tag was to reimburse them for their time, and maintenance of their temple.

[Kami2awa]

Most towns and villages will already have a machine intended specifically for turning stuff to powder - namely, a millstone.

[Fel Temp]

One thing I know from collecting ancient coins is that silver can crystalize and become quite fragile. Like I've accidentally broken an argenteus by lightly handling it. It doesn't happen all the time, and I'm not sure what conditions cause it, but if you can find enough really old silver objects, you should be able to find some that could be crushed into a powder with little effort.

[Knaight]

No kidding. And just how big is a flask, anyway? A gallon of water is 8 lbs, which I would suspect is several times bigger than a flask (which I imagine as about 8 oz). In which case the silver you are adding to the water is five times the weight of the water itself...

The density of silver is high enough that technically there is room for this - and 8 oz is a pretty small flask anyways.

[Lord Torath]

The density of silver is high enough that technically there is room for this - and 8 oz is a pretty small flask anyways.

Oh sure. Silver's an order of magnitude denser than water.

So how big is a flask? A 2E flask of lamp oil weighed 1 lb, which implies a volume of 2-3 cups (oil is less dense than water). Greek Fire (flammable, sticky oil) weighs 2 lbs per flask, but some of that may be packaging (you really don't want it breaking any time to get bumped), so it's still hard to say for sure.

Holy Water (per the 2E PHB) weighs 1/10^th of a pound, and costs 25 gp. Less than 2 ounces of water.

[Aotrs Commander]

It is worth pointing out that the holy water at the end of it probably doesn't have the actual silver left in it - it's a material component, not an ingredient, asit were, so as per normal, it'll probably be consumed by the activation of the spell.