Help with gold leaf removal from lead

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TreySeaJax

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
21
Hi. Trey here. New to forum and rookie refiner.

I was at Goodwill Outlet and saw a couple of light switch covers with heavy gold leaf on them. Even the backs were covered. Most of you would have passed on them I am sure.

Anyway, at this Goodwill Outlet everything is 57 cents a pound US. So with lead being at 66c per pound I would still be ahead without processing that bit of gold.

I have done some plated lead jewelry and simply soaked in Aqua Regia until it came off then put the lead bits in a special lead waste bin for later processing. Those were very small items.

With these larger items, does anyone have tips to make it easier? It would be nice not to have to use a lot of AR also.

Thanks in advance.
 
Regular Gold leaf is about .0000035" thick. The poorly named "double-thick" leaf is actually only about 10-15% thicker. You can put a sheet on a wet piece of glass and see through it, sort of. It's value is about 4 cents per square inch and a square inch weighs about .0011 grams, which is likely to be less than you're capable of weighing. Easily can get lost in the shuffle.
 
True my scale is only accurate to .001 grams.

I really got them as a test just to see. I can remember my grandmother, who was one of my favorite people ever, being really crafty. She would buy 24k gold leaf that came in small glass jars as flakes. She would decorate all types of things with it.

I really expect to find maybe a 100th of a gram over both covers. They seem heavily coated like grandma used to do it and probably done by hand. I did melt a peice and the lead made teardrops in my bucket along with nice little flakes of gold. Seems such a waste of time. However when I watch prospectors pan... They don't find nuggets anymore and when they find flakes of that size they seem excited. Reading other posts members of this group often remind each other it is about fun and learning as much, if not more than profit and science. I like that!

I have read stories from a man who would even purchase gold rimmed drinking glasses and dinner plates just to strip them. I really feel like I should have grabbed the 40 peice gold plated silverware set at a thrift store for 30 USD but another person bought it while I was deciding. Sometimes I am such a Libra.

Anyway, I already have them. Not in a hurry to do anything either. I have about 70 US cents invested so....

Oh and correction they are outlet covers not lightswitch. Here's a pic of the one not partially melted. The green tint in places is from some slightly wet copper tubing that was on top of it in my junk bucket.

Maybe it is not worth the acid or fire to burn them but if trying to amass a bit of gold.... Maybe you could tell me the most frugal why to do it even if it takes time... HCL and Bleach?

Thank you
 

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You could probably have sold them to someone renovating an old house for far more than the gold value but as one is now done for anyway try the sulphuric cell, details for that are here on the forum but do take care.
 
Nickvc,
Thanks for the tip. I have not researched gold cells at all yet. I have been studying silver cells in hopes to attempt one soon as I have dissolved lots of silver. Much of the silver nitrate I have melted into chunks and will remelt into shot for cell fodder.

I don't care to sell anything as-is. Like I said I only bought them to test and learn. I do have a job, it is just minimum-wage for a non- profit. Just lost everything a few years back.

I will study the sulphuric cell you advised and thank you for the respectful response.
 
Dilute Nitric may attack the lead and remove the Gold as flakes. The rest of the Lead could then be removed, the flakes filtered off and the Lead Nitrate evaporated and converted to Lead Oxide by heating.
Lead nitrate can be absorbed through the skin and heating any lead compound poses inhalation risks. Converting the Lead Nitrate to Oxide also produces NO2 gas

Cheers Wal
 
Why waste any acid on this? Why jeopardize your health or others health, sell the hunk of lead and move on. The gold would not even be enough to make the lead harder, make bullets out of it. I would focus my attention on finding something worth recovering and refining, and also spend it time learning.

This to me seems like someone finding a hunk of pyrite, finding out they have a rock of fools gold, the new member says's "they heard that it could contain some gold, and wishes to learn to recover it. Yes, there may be some gold in his rock but us discussing how he can recover the gold and lead his gold fever down that rabbit hole does not really help anyone get gold...
 
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