Silver nitrate stained floor - please help me get our bond back!!

The Stone · Mar 16, 2016

Hi.

I jave recently moved apartments but spilled somesilver nitrate on th landlords wooden floor!! It will cost me a fortune if they have to replace the floor boards! !

Does anyone know how to lift this kind of stain?!

Thanks!

Rick A · Mar 16, 2016

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/silver_nitrate#section=Top

Molli · Mar 16, 2016

There may be some workable ideas here: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Don't you just love moving out of rental properties; everything is fine until the day before you move out and suddenly door handles start falling off, your dog decides to come inside via a closed window and the oven decides to pack it in. Best of luck with your clean up.

chrisaisenbrey · Mar 16, 2016

from J. Chem. Educ., 1981, 58 (2), p 201

methode 2 is also called: Farmer’s Reducer

Sirius Glass · Mar 16, 2016

1) Live there forever
2) Flee the country

AgX · Mar 16, 2016

Rick A said:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/silver_nitrate#section=Top

The stains are not Silver-Nitrate, but metallic Silver.
Thus have to be treated with Farmer-Reducer or another Silver-bleach.

The fibre has already been affected, as that Silver-Nitrate must have been reduced to Silver, the fibre thus been oxidized.

AgX · Mar 16, 2016

Agfa even even offered a special de-stainer for textiles...

Andrew O'Neill · Jun 30, 2017

I'm still waiting for the silver nitrate stain to fade on my arm. How it got there, I do not know!

drkhalsa · Jun 30, 2017

I don't have experience with silver stains, but we used to use oxalic acid in furniture refinishing to remove stains from oak. It was blue/black stain in the bare wood after the old finish had been removed. Best of luck.

removed account4 · Jun 30, 2017

throw rug ?

Herzeleid · Jul 3, 2017

Well I would try this on another piece of wood first, then see if it changes over a period.

First expose the silver stain to light to ensure all the silver is exposed. Pour tincture of iodine over the silver nitrate stains.
Dark silver salts will be bleached and rehalogenized to silver iodide. Limit the amount of light to the wood at this stage.
Next pour rapid fixer onto the stain. It will fix all the unexposed silver halide.
Wash with water and clean.

It worked on various surfaces (including my hands), it didn't work great on walls. Some stain remains but slightly visible.

I hope it helps.

pdeeh · Jul 3, 2017

I wonder if the OP ever got this sorted out? He hasn't logged in for over a year now.
I'd be amazed if you could get a silver stain out of something as porous as wood without leaving just as obvious a mark behind, unless you were a professional restorer. I've had enough trouble getting them off a bathtub.

Herzeleid · Jul 3, 2017

pdeeh said:
I wonder if the OP ever got this sorted out? He hasn't logged in for over a year now.
I'd be amazed if you could get a silver stain out of something as porous as wood without leaving just as obvious a mark behind, unless you were a professional restorer. I've had enough trouble getting them off a bathtub.

I thought this was recent never occurred to me to check the dates. Well, iodine and fixer helped me to remove the stains from the baththubi wood is an entirely different matter of course.

M Carter · Jul 4, 2017

Didn't know the thread was so old. Last resort is get a wood floor guy in to spot-sand and refinish - if it's real wood floors, which are designed to be sanded several times over their life. My home is 1930's vintage, if you pull a baseboard you can see the floors were originally about 1/8" higher, so they were likely sanded when installed and then redone some time after. I did a few rooms recently myself. In my previous home (1920's), I took out a floor heater and patched in about a 2' x 3' section, sanded down to feather in, and matched the stain and finish - couldn't tell it had been touched. In the US, the common old floors are 3/4" thick solid oak. (My current house turns out to be white oak - that stuff is pricey, but if you go with a dark stain you can match it with red oak easily).

If they're the cheap laminate floors in use today, I don't think those allow for sanding.

The Stone · Apr 17, 2021

pdeeh said:
I wonder if the OP ever got this sorted out? He hasn't logged in for over a year now.
I'd be amazed if you could get a silver stain out of something as porous as wood without leaving just as obvious a mark behind, unless you were a professional restorer. I've had enough trouble getting them off a bathtub.

Hey! I'm back - haven't logged into "APUG" in so long!

FYI: I never did win against that stain, it cost me a few hundred bucks but gained me a valuable lesson!

Silver nitrate stained floor - please help me get our bond back!!

The Stone

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Silver nitrate stained floor - please help me get our bond back!!

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