Soldering iron for less use of chemicals

Hi everybody!

I'm quite a newbie around here (and dealing with recovering gold from scrap), so I'd like a small piece of your wisdom if it's not too much to ask.

First of all say that I checked the forum and I realize that most of you don't see very useful the use of the soldering iron because it takes a lot of time and effort to get the gold fingers, but I'd like to explain my point: for me probably this is going to be something I'd do once in my lifetime, something more like for the pleasure of doing it and to see if I can do it, more than for the gold itself. So, after being a time researching and looking at different ways of getting the gold I found this and I liked it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPXY8e7-J9Y

Take in consideration that I have a lot of respect to the chemicals, so I'd like to avoid a big use of them because of that, because it isn't going to be a big operation (I just got about 60 ram sticks and 30 old firewire PCI cards) and because probably I won't be using them again. That's why this method seemed to fit to me, it's true that it takes time and dedication, but looks like it can be done with not too much resources and I can borrow most of them.

I'll save the IC from the ram because who knows, maybe in a future I'll try to get the gold from them, but for now only the gold of the fingers. So, looking at my situation, do you think that this is a good approach? Do you have any suggestions or advices?

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge!!

You will make out better selling them on Ebay and buying some gold.

Welcome to the forum!

Yes, you can process your fingers and get a bit of gold. I saw a lot of technique errors in the video, but overall, it works. Be aware that there are steps left out like dealing with the hazardous waste created in the process, and protecting yourself and those around you from the potentially deadly fumes.

Jim is right that you can probably sell them on eBay, buy a bit of gold with the proceeds, and be way ahead financially. If you can borrow glassware, chemicals, crucibles, etc., it's a fascinating experience to dissolve gold, precipitate it out of solution, and melt it into a button. If you have to buy anything along the way, you may spend more than the value of the gold you'll recover, but if you're doing it for the experience it's very educational.

But be careful! it's addicting. :lol:

Before you jump into following that video, spend some time reading here on the forum. You'll learn some better techniques and how to deal with the hazards.

Dave

Thanks for the advices, that's why I ended here: you cannot trust all you see on the internet (or YouTube in this case), so better find out people who really knows what they do. I saw how much you love guys like this

About selling on the net, I investigated a bit and apart from people/business doing it more professionally I didn't find too much movement around selling this on eBay (for example) here in Spain, so I didn't take it into consideration. Besides, is more about just trying it that the gold itself, I could save a bit of money a few months an buy half ounce :G Maybe the scrap dealer could be an option being this just something that I maybe do just once.

Going to the point, dealing with the chemical reactions was the reason because I liked the use of the soldering iron (even if it's a "harder" work), getting just a small amount of material that can be handled easier than separating from cut gold fingers. A friend of mine work in a high-school, so he may be able to lend me those items I'll need, perhaps the only "but" would be the crucible and melting the gold itself. I know the IC may be a better source for gold, but as I said, my zero experience wants me away from a big amount of hazardous things, no amount of gold worth a calling for a disaster and what I'm doing is mainly just for the "what if".

@FrugalRefiner, you pointed some problems with the video could you please advise me some thread to read here? I'm already reading and looking for information here, but English is not my native language and even if I can defend myself, with technical terms can be a bit difficult (and to be honest, I got surprised with the amount of information here, overwhelming even searching for something concrete). Apart from "basics" about safety, disposal and similar, wich I'm reading by my own.

Again, all suggestions are welcome, even if thay are for telling me to turn away and don't even try, haha :lol:

Honestly the amount of gold you would get from the fingers of 90 cards total, you might not even be able to see with the naked eye after you are finished.

Not trying to discourage you from learning, we all started somewhere, just trying to make it realistic for you. That gold is plated very, very thin, your yield would be equally small.

rickbb said:

Honestly the amount of gold you would get from the fingers of 90 cards total, you might not even be able to see with the naked eye after you are finished.

Not trying to discourage you from learning, we all started somewhere, just trying to make it realistic for you. That gold is plated very, very thin, your yield would be equally small.

Click to expand...

Not at all, much appreciate any point of view or suggestion. I'm here more for the pleasure of learning and, as FrugalRefiner said, for the "fascinating experience" of dissolving gold. I'm trying to get a bigger amount of ram modules for this. Also maybe I can try with ram's IC (I think I didn’t mention but all sticks are DDR2, just to point the they are not too new), to dissolve the covering sulphuric acid is too nasty for my own personal taste considering my zero experience, buy could try burning or just cracking them using a ball mill or similar or using my condensed rage with a hammer, hahaha :lol: . I can always try to find some scrap on sale on the internet to add, even I think I can punt my hand on a couple of Pentium MMX or even an old Pentium PRO.

Apart from that I think I have quite clear the steps to follow with the fingers (and with all the gold plated material I can get), before I ended here I made my own investigations, I'm not the "let's de crazy things in crazy ways" type. Maybe some of you can correct me if I’m wrong with the procedure:

[first of all sorry if I made some mistakes with some items names, as I said before, English is not my native language]

• After taking the necessary precautions (gloves, fume hood…), put the material into an adequate beaker with distilled water, adding after the nitric (not too much, I’d add more lately if I see that more is needed), and warm everything.

• When all base metals are dissolved, filter and clean what is left with distilled water. Now that we separate those metals, take what I want and put it in another beaker to make AR, instead of making a proportion or similar, add the HCl and the nitric, but this last one not too much to keep adding more as needed to don’t have an excess of it. Warm this too like before.

• After this all and with the gold dissolved, must filter again to the remove all remaining unwanted things. Having the “clean” gold dissolution, add SMB as needed to precipitate de gold, filter it again to just stay with the gold, clean it again with water few times and melt what is left to have the gold finally processed.
  (for this last step maybe have some urea near in case I need to neutralize the excess of nitric if there is some)

RickBB does have a really good point.

If you're here for the learning then having a positive experience from that learning is really important. You want to see as proper result. Having a tiny amount of powder that you can hardly see won't be that.

Just my take on it but I think so long as a person goes into his first recover/refine with a good understanding of what to expect even a small amount of gold can be rewarding as far the experience goes. I once ran a single pair of gold filled ear rings. I have ran a single pair of eyeglass frames as well. To my surprise the amount of gold recovered was quite a bit more than I expected. Yes it was a tiny amount of gold, but still about twice what I expected. If a person can do these tiny scale processes then working with larger amounts becomes even easier. I started with those tiny batch's myself, and learned much of what I apply to larger jobs these days. Of coarse it pays to keep the mind open for new learning experiences as we gain knowledge and confidence.

Thanks for your replies, all you say will be taken into consideration!

@anachronism don’t' worry, I understand what RickBB said, that's why I'm thinking into getting some more material to process it. My previous post process was just for your assessment of the procedure; it didn't mean that I was going to do it right now.

As @Shark said, I'm not expecting to get a huge amount of gold out of this. For me something around 0,5~1 gram of gold would to the trick (just to see it and think "Wow, I made this!"), that's why I said about adding some Pentium MMX or one Pentium Pro as a quick way to increase the amount of the final material. Also, I'm checking on ebay and similar places for it and I don't mind losing a bit of money in the process, for example spending 15~20 bucks on a PP that may only worth around 14$ wouldn't mind me.

I thought that with the fingers and the gold plated pins of the card I could get something more to be able to see it with the naked eye, so that's why I decided to get more material after the comments you made. But as I said, I’m not expecting an outstanding amount of gold.

EDIT
I just bought a Pentium PRO and a R80186, I maybe paid a bit too much for what is worth but, ey! I'm not doing this for the money