Old Telephone Switch Gear

I have an opportunity to acquire some old old telephone switch gear. At least I think it's old old telephone switch gear. There may be up to two tons of this stuff available, and I think I can buy it for about 20 cents per pound. The dark colored strips are copper, with spots of gold plating. The silver colored strips are magnetic, either 400 series stainless, or nickle.

Is any one familiar with this stuff? The last picture shows some contacts, would you expect Palladium?

Any guess as to how much this stuff might be worth?

(I hope I'm not burning up too much band width with my pictures.)

The copper rods, in the 1st two photos (the ones in front in the 2nd photo), could have very thick gold plating on them. I have processed what looks like that material only once, and I would guess that the rods could easily run over $100/pound, in gold, at today's gold prices, assuming they are the same ones I ran.. I mentioned them early on on the forum in this list - check 7c in the list on this thread - I called them copper sticks. Read the whole thread. It's great to see a photo of them
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=95&p=1485#p1485

Most of the Pd points I've seen on telephone switch gear were mounted on what are called wire relays - the blades on these are wires about 3 or 4" long which are flattened out where the point is mounted. The Pd points I have seen were always rectangular in shape, about 1/8" long, or less, and about 1/32" wide. They are a sort of steely gray color and are pure Pd. I have also seen the same points on flat blades, similar to the blades in the 3rd photo. Look for these small rectangular Pd points. I would bet they're there somewhere.

The points in the 3rd photo appear to be either round silver points or gold plated silver points.

I think you have found some excellent material, but please don't buy it based on my guesses. Evaluate the material yourself, based on counting what is there. Every time I see this type material, I get excited.

The gold on the copper sticks could easily be removed in the sulfuric stripper.

For the Pd points, we sheared them close, removed the copper with a hot nasty sulfuric acid/chromic acid solution, removed the nickel backing on the points with hot concentrated HCl, and sold the intact points as pure Pd.

GSP

I pulled these parts out of a pile of sheet metal, that a baler machine was working on. In other words, they were going to be baled up, and sent to a steel mill. I know the owner of the yard, and he told me I could pull a bunch of industrial circuit boards out of electrical boxes in the piles. Took me all day, but I got 350lbs or so of some pretty good boards for free. (Free except for my labor in the hot sun.)

The main part of the yard is a mess that hasn't been cleaned out for many years, and one of the hands told me there was a big bin of the same telephone switch gear in the yard. I got about four times what you see in the picture today, as a free sample. I'm going to go see if I can find any more tomorrow.

Thanks for the reply.

Edit: As far as me evaluating the material, I've been studying the art of refining, and collecting equipment for a lab, but I'm no where near having an operational lab. Until I get there, I'm doing what I've done for a long time, that is, collect material to refine when I get the chance. If I buy the material cheap enough, I could get my money back on the copper alone.

John

I might mention that we once bought and processed 50,000# of telephone scrap that contained nothing but banks of wire relays with Pd points. The 50,000# figure included everything, including all of the steel racking. At that time, Pd was about $80/ounce and the total value in Pd was $50,000 = $1/#. It took 2 people one month to process it. Since the Pd was pure to start with, we made every effort to design a process that would not dissolve or melt any Pd. Instead, we trimmed and dissolved everything away from the Pd.

When relays started going out of vogue, 30 or 40 years ago, there began a rush of buying this superb scrap. Entire rooms of banks of relays were available. It came from telephone companies and from large industrial companies that had a lot of telephones in their plants. When it became available, it went pretty fast. The last I found was about 5 years ago in Houston. It's still around in dumpsters in scrap yards and in attics of old large industrial buildings.

Someone on the forum, quite awhile ago, put on a photo of Pd contact points. I think they were from a Hammond? organ.

I came across gold-silver-copper alloy (20-30% gold) in the contact points and bars, in similar switchgear. Not saying those are the same. You must test them. Those are usually little gold mines! (Or platinum, or palladium) mmmm the good old days!

Hello all.

GSP

Your description of the rods in the other thread: http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=95&p=1485#p1485

goldsilverpro said:

I only saw them once, in about 1990. They are copper rods, with a rectangular cross section about 1/4" by 1/8". The ones I had were about 18" long. There were about 5 or 6 plated sections along the length. The plated sections were an inch or so long and wrapped all the way around the rod.

At the time, Au was $400/oz and the rods ran at least $50/pound.

Click to expand...

At today"s price of $1367.00, that would be $170.88 per pound.

Your rods measured about .125" thick x .250" wide, which gives 0.03125" cubic inches per linear inch, and .750 sq. inches surface area per linear inch.
The rods I have measure .031" thick x .119" wide, which gives 0.003689" cubic inches per linear inch, and .300 sq. inches surface area per linear inch.

At a density of about 0.322688 pounds per cu. inch, (copper)

Your rods would have been about 0.010084 pounds/linear inch, and 99.167 linear inches per pound.
My rods would be about 0.001190396032 pounds/linear inch, and 840.057 linear inches per pound.

Your rods would have been about (99.167 x .750) 74.37525 square inches surface area per pound.
My rods would be about (840.057 x .300) 252.0171 square inches surface area per pound. (3.388 times more surface area per pound)

My rods have gold pads .65" in length x 16 pads on each 25" rod, or 0.1248 square inches of gold per linear inch or 104.839 sq. inches of gold per pound.
Your rods had gold pads 1" in length x 6 pads on each 18" rod, or 0.25 square inches of gold per linear inch or 24.79175 sq. inches of gold per pound.

That means my rods have about 4.23 times more surface area of gold per pound. (If your guess of the dimensions were anywhere close)
The gold wraps all the way around each pad, (as you said) and one of the narrow edges has some gold that runs the full length of the rod. Which means I can't cut the copper sections out, there is gold all the way down the rod. I think the gold is quite thick. (As you said)

I was thinking these could be CN stripped, but in this thread: http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=7917&p=73399&hilit=cement+mixer#p73399

You wrote:

goldsilverpro said:

In this case, due mainly to the configuration of the material, I don't think that the cement mixer cyanide process (using NaCN and H2O2) would be the way to go. This system relies on 2 things - that a nickel barrier exists between the gold and copper and that the stripping be done very quickly (maybe, within 1 to 4 minutes. If it is not done quickly, the nickel will slowly degrade in the cyanide or it will abrade by the tumbling action. Once any nickel is gone and copper is exposed, the gold that is dissolved will tend to immerse (cement) back onto the copper.

Click to expand...

I got no nickle. I got lots of exposed copper. I'm still thinking the slow CN process might work. (free CN held under .02%, copper not dissolved)

Do you remember how you did yours? I ended up with about thirty pounds of the rods plus many hundreds of the little fingers that rubbed against the rods. These little fingers are excellent material on their own.

Regards.
John

In my year and a half of collecting recovery scrap I have come to believe that old telco gear is the possible mother lode of our hobby. What makes me want to puke is the amount of material I have let slip through my fingers in years past due to previous lack of interest and not possessing the knowledge I have obtained here in my short time on the forum. Since I am 60 plus I can remember the telco's back before deregulation. All of their equipment was built to what seems like mil spec and them some. At that time the prices that the the telco's charged for basic phone service and long distance were based on a specific rate of return on what they had to spend to provide the service (this is somewhat simplified I know but close to practice). Something similar to many military contracts of which I worked on when I was younger that being the famous "cost plus" contracts. In other words if you could throw a little extra against a contract you could get a percentage increase in return to the bottom line. I have seen many contracts that specified a basic cost plus 10 percent. Before dereg the phone company owned every piece of equipment that was used to connect to their system...every phone in your home and business was telco owned and built to last.

The Texan

There's a lot of discussion about CN on this forum, but the only people who actually use it, live outside the USA. (That I'm aware of.)

Are there any small refiners on here who have managed to get whatever permits the federales require?

semi-lucid,

There is an official name for these Cu/Au bar things but I can't remember what it is.

How many pounds of them do you have?

Don't go by the dimensions or the values I gave. They were purely guesses (too many years - too many types of material) after seeing this stuff one time many years ago. After seeing the photos, I would say that your material is the exact same stuff I had. Mainly, I remember that the value was quite good per pound. I do remember some variations in these - different bar lengths, different spacing, different gold lengths, etc.

I only had a few pounds of them. I probably just cut them into shorter lengths, put them in a bucket, and dissolved all the copper in nitric, with occasional stirring. A gallon of concentrated nitric, diluted to 2 gallons with water, will dissolve about 2# of copper. You could probably run a stick or two in this manner in order to get an idea of value.

To cut down on the nitric usage, you could eliminate the bare copper sections with a small alligator shear or other cutting tool. Then, you could remove the copper under the gold with 50/50 nitric or, maybe, HCl/H2O2. A problem with a shear is that it can smear the gold and partially seal the ends. Therefore, if you try this, I would leave about 1/8" of bare copper, more or less, on each end of the gold sections. It might take a long time to dissolve the copper since, due to the gold thickness (it's probably non-porous at that thickness), the acid would most likely have to penetrate from the ends of the gold section towards the center. Heat would speed things up.

You could also use the strong electrolytic sulfuric stripper (sulfuric cell). If you could set this up well and run it with proper controls and precautions, this might be the fastest, cheapest, easiest, safest way. Also, you would end up with salable copper.

The problem with the weak cyanide is the large amount of solution you would generate. At that strength and 100% efficiency, one gallon would dissolve about 3 g of gold. You would also have to introduce some air into this, since the oxygen in the air is needed to provide an oxidant for the dissolving. However, you might be able to analyze the CN content occasionally and make additions, in order to reduce the total volume of solution you would need - that's how it is done when processing ore. In practice, you might be lucky to get 25% efficiency, due to the fact that oxidants will also decompose the cyanide. Also, 0.02% NaCN is a maximum. You may have to use less to prevent attack on the copper. I have never tried this or know of anyone that has used it on plated material. Harold was the one that posted the .02% concentration and he was talking about ore concentrates, I think.

To strip Ag from Cu, I once successfully experimented with an electrolytic solution containing about 4-6 oz/gal NaCN and 12-15 oz/gal NaOH, at about 3V to 6V at room temp. The Ag stripped and plated onto a sheet of stainless. For some reason [possibly copper(I) oxide formation], the high sodium hydroxide content prevents attack on the copper. I would think that this would work the same with gold.

The last idea is to melt into bars and dissolve and plate out the copper (bag the anodes) using the copper sulfate/H2SO4 electrolyte formula I posted on a couple of threads. However, this would only work if the copper were very nearly pure to start with. Since the bars are conductors, they may be quite pure, but don't count on it.

Whatever you do, first experiment with small amounts. Always look before you leap.



texan,

You're right about the old telco switching gear being the mother load. It and gold brazed jet engine scrap are my two all-time favorite (most lucrative) types of scrap.

GSP

I only got a few of them out of that baler pile and a couple of them were mangled and it was difficult to dismantle without abrading the gold. These things were inside of a steel frame work, and at least one of those frames got baled with two sets of the shortest rods in it, as well as hundreds of the little gold tipped copper fingers. (Pictured below)

There may have been more that got baled, but I searched the whole yard and found no more.

I've got 5477 grams (12.06 lbs) of the best grade rods. 25" long
I've got 5367 grams (11.82 lbs) of 25" long rods that only have gold on one side of the pad. (1/2 as good as the best rods)
I think I will have about 4632 grams (10.2 lbs) of shorter rods (10.5"). (maybe 1/2 as good as the best rods)

All of these rods have a little gold on the narrow sides of the rectangle, all the way down the rod. I can't cut the copper sections out.

The little gold tipped fingers may be by far the best material. The copper is only .004" thick. (.1mm) (Pictured below)

I'll get some detailed picture's later on.

I'm a little concerned about beryllium. The copper is a little hard, not real soft.
Is there an easy way to determine if copper has beryllium in it ?

John

The one (or more) that got baled would have gone to a big shredder where they shred automobiles and washing machines and all sorts of stuff. I assume they recover some/most of the copper, and that at least some of the gold will end up at a Copper refiner, where it will be recovered.

What do you think of that process? Mix the gold with a few old cars and washing machines and then shred it up? :shock:

It's gone. Dwell on the material at hand.

Can you weigh one 25" rod? I need to estimate the number of rods. If you go the sulfuric stripper route, this will tell me how to size the equipment.

Do you want to do those yourself? If so, let's decide on how you're going to do it. Whatever, I'll walk you through it, from soup to nuts. This is a good item to run yourself - it's fairly easy and it could be quite lucrative.

I would suggest the strong sulfuric stripping cell.

PROS:
1- Pretty fast, depending on what equipment you have.
2- Very little waste is generated once you learn how to do it.
3- The chemicals and needed equipment are readily available and cheap, except for the power supply,
4- Not many fumes.
5- You can sell the copper.
6- It is quite efficient - it can get most all of the gold.

CONS:
1- The biggest cost item is the power supply. You'll have to spend some money on it, unless you're very enterprising.
2- Concentrated Sulfuric Acid will burn you bad if you don't do things right.


What chemicals do you have know? What sort of workspace do you have? - exhaust? Do you have any nitric? Have you worked with chemicals before?

The first thing I would do is to find out how much total gold you're looking for by performing assays on the rods and the contacts. This can easily be done, by you, with a little nitric, a standard glass coffee pot, a flat white Corning Ware dish (5 quart size is best because the coffee pot will fit in it - if you have a beaker, you can use a smaller CW dish), a hot plate, a glass stirring rod or a section cut from a plastic clothes hanger, rubber gloves, a welder's plastic full-face mask, guts, carefulness (refining is a "look before you leap" thing), and a scale that will read to .01g (.001 g would be much better). Tell me when you're ready to do this and I'll guide you through it. A preliminary assay will help prevent surprises and will tell you how much you can afford to pay for the equipment. Hopefully, you can afford to buy a decent power supply - a regular (one switch, one knob, 2 meters, a power cord, and a fuse - in the very distant good old days, battery chargers were made this way. My brother has one.) plating rectifier is the best, as far as I'm concerned. Also, you can use the rectifier for many other neat refining things.

Please answer all of my questions.

Chris

goldsilverpro said:

Tell me when you're ready to do this and I'll guide you through it.

Click to expand...

Thanks. That's actually a considerable gift your offering.

goldsilverpro said:

Please answer all of my questions.

Click to expand...

I need some time compose concise answers to all those questions. I get back to you.

I don't know if you collect any souvenirs of this type, but if you would like one I'll mail you one of the rods and a set of fingers so you can see it for yourself. Just PM me a street address.

John

texan,

You're right about the old telco switching gear being the mother load. It and gold brazed jet engine scrap are my two all-time favorite (most lucrative) types of scrap.[/quote]

I am afraid a jet engine won't go into my Civic and I am sure that is where my wife would draw the line....but I have been able to get a few boxes of telco scrap at a time....

Texan

GSP

I've finally got around to doing these parts.
I spent a lot of time studying the copper refining business and then got distracted with other things.

In the first post you made above, you wrote:

"I have processed what looks like that material only once, and I would guess that the rods could easily run over $100/pound, in gold, at today's gold prices, assuming they are the same ones I ran"

In one of the posts above, I posted the price of gold at that time at $1367.00.

I haven't finished the last two pounds of the best of the rods, but I expect the total yield to be right at 3 troy.

At $1367.00 that would be $4101.00. Divided by 34 pounds of rods, that's $120.62/pound

Your guess of easily over $100/pound was correct.

I had five different types of rods in the batch. Different lengths, and differences in the plating.
The best type was much better than the worst type.

With in these different types there was a lot of difference between one rod and another.
Some of them stripped very quickly, and others might take five times as long to strip.

There was a lot of variation between rods of the same type,
and a big difference between the best type and the worst type.

If all the rods had been as good as the very best pieces,
I think the yield could have been five or six times better than it was.
The best pieces were really great.

But averaged together your guess was spot on.

At today's price of $1255.00 it would be 3765/34 = $110.74/pound

I have a question about AR.

If the color of the AR is right, and its nice and clear after dropping,
and I use minimal SMB for the drop, does that tell me that I didn't have any or much copper present?

I posted a thread about processing the material here:

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=27077&p=287181#p287181

8 year project, that's persistence!

Thanks for making this thread complete. And a nice payout in the end.

If the liquid is pale and not contain tones of green or blue then there shouldn't be any excess copper in the gold or in the liquid in the beginning. SMB can precipitate copper chloride as a white crystal mass but that is easily dissolved in HCl, giving a dark brown to green solution. You would probably need extreme amounts of SMB to create a colorless solution if you had a lot of copper.

Göran

Good job, John. I saw your gold on the other thread. Looked pretty good.

Hello
This is the first time I've posted on your forum. I have a "Lorain 6B8 Power Unit". My Dad brought it home many years ago from his job with the telephone company. He told me it could be worth something due to metals it contains. After reading some of the posts on this site I think that might be true. This unit is big. It's approximately 6' x 6' x 1.5' thick and very heavy. I live just outside Vancouver Canada and was hoping someone could tell me how I would begin with this unit. Would it be worth it to take it apart and seperate the materials, or find a buyer for the entire unit? Any thoughts?
Thanks
Kelly

That is only the power supply....the relays are what are valuable.

Hey guys, been following this thread and am very intrigued with these old telecom connectors. I have quite a few boxes of old military and telecom parts boxes from the 50s, 60s, and 70s so I started going through them. Can anyone identify these various parts and equipment. Also if anyone k owns anyone that collects or a good place to check and see if any of this has resale value. If I sell items I will pay commission. I have a bunch of new parts still I packages.