11.5 ounces of fuzz button connectors

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Topher_osAUrus

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 16, 2016
Messages
1,923
Location
OK DoC
Earlier today I received my usps package in the mail with the fuzz button connectors from the big servers. I immediately opened the bag and dumped it into a large corningware quiche dish (to catch stray fuzzies that popped out). All in all there were 86.
4 large "quad buttons" -cinch t 0650 sss 242229 -56.79g
2 cinch 0543 -10.70g
2 cinch 0234 - 10.61g
1 cinch 0235 - 7.29g
10 unknown # similar to 0543 -45.60g
42 unknown model# (small square in center w no fuzzies)-118.44g
25 cinch 0326 (similar to unknown above, but 2 small rows in the center where there were none in the above unknown) - 72.38g
86 total for 321.81g
0107171443.jpg
I wasnt quite sure how to pragmatically go about this in a beneficial manner for the forum. But, I am going to dry the now leeched connectors and weigh them again. And report the difference between the weights, then the yield of gold.
0107171529.jpg
After they ran to completion the solution was a very deep orange/red.

0109170819.jpg

0109170821.jpg
Sulfamic addition gave little effervescence after stirring.

It wont let me add anymore pictures to this post, so i will continue on in the next post.

So far I have collected the gold after precipitation, but the solution still had a reddish tint to it. Stannous yielded a brown result, indicating I either overdosed or there is a little platinum in solution.

I will add pictures of the mud, solution that im cementing on copper and the stannous result after ppt. I am obviously still working on this. Trying to be as fastidious as possible, but, Im not used to documenting and presenting everything. Also being sick as a dog for 3 days reslly hasnt helped.

Any input is greatly appreciated.
 
0112171425a.jpg
This is the solution color still, after precipitating the gold out.

0111171332.jpg
Control, copperas crystal, stannous test

0111171403.jpg
Gold powder, dirty, gold powder

0112171425.jpg
Connectors after rinsing and adding rinse water to mother liquor (before ppt, this picture should have been before the other 2)
 
just as a heads up, be careful about getting the solution too dilute... you will find a deep blue color change that happens if you do. Do a number of extra HCl washes of your gold before rinsing with water.
 
mls26cwru said:
just as a heads up, be careful about getting the solution too dilute... you will find a deep blue color change that happens if you do. Do a number of extra HCl washes of your gold before rinsing with water.

I generally do the first rinse with HCl, until little to no color change, then I procede with water.

This is just the first refine posted up, I am working on it still and will continue to add updates and pictures until I have the total yield melted.

I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
(sorry, I've been around my kiddos and their cousins far too much recently..)

Thanks gentlemen. 8)
 
Topher_osAUrus said:
I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
(sorry, I've been around my kiddos and their cousins far too much recently..)
There is no such thing as being around them too much right now. Believe it or not, tomorrow (or, at least it will seem that way), they'll be getting their driver's licenses and they won't want to spend much time around you. Treasure every moment while you can, even if you can't stand to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants one more time. :p

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Topher_osAUrus said:
I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
(sorry, I've been around my kiddos and their cousins far too much recently..)
There is no such thing as being around them too much right now. Believe it or not, tomorrow (or, at least it will seem that way), they'll be getting their driver's licenses and they won't want to spend much time around you. Treasure every moment while you can, even if you can't stand to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants one more time. :p

Dave

True story.

The orange color is not platinum--it is molybdenum.

The blue, likewise, is called molybdenum blue.
 
Excellent! Thank you Lou... I was a bit worried smb wasn't dropping all of the gold for some reason (even though I denoxxed with sulfamic, and waited overnight for it to react [both the sulfamic, then the smb])

Good to know that there wasn't something funny going on with my choice precipitant.

And Dave, I feel their independence coming in leaps and bounds already, where sometimes they would just rather watch their tablets than hang with boring old dad. But, I think my saving grace will be refining...whenever I am sorting scrap, weighing it up, and writing it all down. They always have to be right there asking me questions the whole way...about what it is, what I'm going to do with it, why, etc... So, I can only hope that their interest grows as they do. But, I guess only time will tell! They have a good long while before they can follow me to the workshop and see what's going on out there though.

Hopefully I can keep their interest until then
 
Kids love sorting and counting--use that cheap labor! :wink:

I have pictures of my daughter, at about age 5, helping me when I was hand-cutting silver chainmaille rings. As they fell off the saw blade, she would pick them up with some long tweezers and put them in her nesting cups. She's now 11, and won't let me kiss her in public lol.
 
After all was said and done the conmectors weighed a grand total of 278.93 grams.

Start total was 321.82
Giving a difference of 42.88 grams.

After rerefining the powder and melting, there was 8.2 grams of gold.

42.88÷8.2= 19%gold alloy in the buttons
8.2 ÷ 321.82 =2.54% total weight gold %
So, 19% of the metal fuzzies was gold, the remainder is molybdenum and whatever else. I still feel like there should have been a bit more gold. But, decanting the stock pot after a few days of aerated copper saturation, there was nome to speak of. So, I suppose that is it.

I guess the yield could have been (would have been) much closer to the 8% that was posed in another thread, if the connectors were all the solid type ones. But 45 of these processed were open centered. Regardless, here are more pics of the process.
0115171443.jpg
Second precipitation during the wash stage

0115171444.jpg
Stock pot after cementing a few days

0116171526.jpg
Dried powder, getting ready to melt. Used a brand new melt dish for this event.

0117171426b.jpg
The melted gold. I had initially poured shotz to divy up the toll but, the total sum has been sent back to the party. I didn't remelt, why? I don't know honestly... Just didn't.
 
0117171426c.jpg
The backside of the button.

The button has a bit of a fern pattern to it, which some other threads say is an indicatiom of platinum group contamination... The xrf reading I had my jeweler shoot today showed no traces of pgm's though....but, thats an xrf gun..take it for what its worth..

0116171609d.jpg
One of the button before I cleaned off the borax.

0117171426a.jpg
Another one showing the pipe and some fern patterning
 
Yes, just a very tiny amount of borax that I used to "wet" the dish. But I did not add any more during the melt. The dish at the tip actually looked a bit dirty when it was just the borax in it, which I attributed to the cold reducing flame of the mapp torch. When I had the gold beginning to melt, and turned up the heat - getting to a nice blue flame- the black disappeared, and I know it didnt go in the gold, as it was nowhere near the spout of the dish. So, I think it was just some carbon that was trapped in the borax glass initially.
 
Actually mls26cwru had very similar results. This is a quote from a post he made back in June of last Year:

"the gold fuzz yields from my runs were similar.... i got an average of 2.7wt% Au vs. holder weight, and 18.0wt% Au vs. fuzz wire weight."

This is a link to that thread: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=16018&hilit=fuzz+buttons
 
Thanks platdigger.

I hadn't seen that thread on them.. That gives me peace of mind on my numbers... Now I can stop wondering "where" the rest could be, and "why" its not in the stock pot.
 
I am very happy with the job this man has done for me on these fuzzy things. I am going to send him some more goodies today!
 
Back
Top