Great Recipe for Silvering Bottles

This is the recipe I use for adding a thin layer of silver to the inside of glass bottles. Before starting rinse the bottle thoroughly and do 1 final rinse with acetone before drying. 5 mL of 1.5 M ammonium nitrate is mixed with 5 mL of 0.5 M silver nitrate and swirled. Next 10 mL of 10% dextrose is added. Then 10 mL of 5% NaOH is added. Quickly wrap parafilm around the opening of the bottle so you can coat the neck without spilling. Swirl the mixture around coating all of the bottle. A brief shake periodically seemed to help in the past so now we continue doing so. When the bottle is thoroughly coated, pour the mixture down the drain with a lot of running water. The reaction mixture can form silver fulminate (an explosive) upon drying in rare cases. Be careful when rinsing the bottle as the layer of silver is quite thin and can easily develop a scratch.