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been buying a few sets of sterling silverware and just throwing the knives in a pile to deal with later...

Well Later has arrived and now I'm trying to find the most efficient way to remove it.

Anyone have any neat tricks?

I'm gonna try with a hacksaw...

*edit- wow I was really tired when I wrote this, corrected title so I don't look like a moron lol.

Hacksaw will take off the blade, but leave the shaft (and corresponding plaster/pitch) in the handle.
The best is an industrial shear if you can get your hands on one.
As a rule of thumb there is typically no more than 25% of silver by weight in a sterling knife so be careful when buying...

Use a hammer to beat the sh1t out of the handle, thereby busting up all the cement inside. With two pair of pliers the silver skin will seperate pretty easy.

Then bring the remains to the Antiques Roadshow...find out it used to be an uber-rare Cartier flatware set.

lol on cartier...

I did the hammer approach, as it was the approach for which I had the tools handy at the time, thanks so much for all the suggestions...

I only cleaned one completely out and we got 11 dwt of dirty sterling, probably less than 1 dwt of plaster was still stuck in there but I got tired of banging it.

We bought the silverware @ $1.05/dwt (about 15c over what we normally pay but was like 800 dwt) We bought the knives @ $1 each and $0.50 each for the smaller knives. We more than recouped our higher purchase price on the knife handles. Its all packed up in a fedex box and probably somewhere in columbus by now lol.

I have no idea why, but the smelter wants the blades taken off, but he doesn't seem to care if the plaster/tang is still in the handle... seems goofy to me.

mflugher wrote:lol on cartier...

I did the hammer approach, as it was the approach for which I had the tools handy at the time, thanks so much for all the suggestions...

I only cleaned one completely out and we got 11 dwt of dirty sterling, probably less than 1 dwt of plaster was still stuck in there but I got tired of banging it.

We bought the silverware @ $1.05/dwt (about 15c over what we normally pay but was like 800 dwt) We bought the knives @ $1 each and $0.50 each for the smaller knives. We more than recouped our higher purchase price on the knife handles. Its all packed up in a fedex box and probably somewhere in columbus by now lol.

I have no idea why, but the smelter wants the blades taken off, but he doesn't seem to care if the plaster/tang is still in the handle... seems goofy to me.

Plaster just burns away. Stainless steel is magnetic and from what I understand mucks up their equipment.