AR and Gold Filled Wire

Basic Question. Is it possible to fill a beaker with some 14/20 gold fill wire, pour AR over it, and stir with glass rod until color of the wire turns, i.e. indicating that the gold top layer has dissolved, then drain and then percipitate the gold out of the AR?

If possible, this would be much quicker and much less costly than nitric acid eating all the base metal in the gold fill to get the 5% residual gold by weight. I have refined gold fill the traditional way and have often thought, why not just stir the gold fill in an AR solution to dissolve the top layer of gold and then drain the solution after the acid eats all the gold.

Everyone's thoughts would be appreciated. I have also investigated electrolysis for gold fill, but can find no references of it working. Electrolysis works for gold plate, but I believe gold fill is too thick to work.

Again, anyone's suggestions would be apprecated.

Bob Gold

Basic answer; Nope.

Darn, Thanks for the answer!

I sure wish there was a way to refine gold filled wire without having to dissolve all the base metal; which is 95% of the the wire's total weight. That is a lot of acid to use for such little gold.

Bob Gold

If you have enough gold wire and can get nitric/make it yourself cheap enough it's well worth it.

Additional copper etchers: Acid/peroxide, acid/persulfate

Lino1406 said:

Additional copper etchers: Acid/peroxide, acid/persulfate

Click to expand...

If the wire is copper this is what I'd do. chop it up, put in the acid/peroxide with a bubbler and go away and do something else for a week or 2.