I need a lil help

I did my first cook and pour. Some online videos and this forum nspired me to go for it. My bar weighs 8.115 toz, I was wondering if you have come across a reddish brown tint with goldi swirled around your bar, and the top is always dark and has black spots when I torch it.I dont think I am pouring correctly or using the correct torch. I am going to try selling to a wholesaler, so I was trying not to AG the gold. I tried to honeycomb it to rid all base metals to try and make it about 99%. I have a nice electric furnace that goes up to 2500F, but the bars look 2 toned...I did a scratch test and it came back above 22k....Any suggestions?

Could I remelt it and cornflake it in water then AG it? Thanks

Is my pour just bad? I use the yellow tank mag/pro

I don’t quite follow what you are saying you had or did.


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snoman701 said:

I don’t quite follow what you are saying you had or did.


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I agree here, I am still confused by the statement the OP made.

Just from the looks of the bar I would say your metal and/or your mold was no where near hot enough to pour. It may just be the metal since I am unsure of what metal it is or how it was treated.

What do you mean by AG your gold?

What was the starting material and how did you refine it?

Göran

Remelt and add nitre cautiously to remove base metals

Sorry, I just assumed this forum was just about gold. I started with a bunch of gold filled jewelry, 12 to 18k... I inquarted it with silver, measurements were accurate, then cooked the base metals out, about 18 hours. Then I dried the gold and melted it. And it looks goldish and rustic.

possible problems, i think..

I did lay my gold why it was drying on a new oven pan all night then baked it on low the next day. The pan looked lik rust when I was finished. Maybe some nitric seeped out and stuck to the gold

Or I didnt cook all the base metalsout, but I felt like I did. Can you guys see the pictures?

Also, I meant AR Aqua Regia

How can I fix this?

I don't fully understand what you have done either but if you are starting with gold filled material you don't need to inquart it. Remove the base metal with dilute nitric and AR the remaining gold foils.

You need to be more clear with the steps you have taken.

How much gold filled did you start with?

Are you attempting to refine gold filled without using nitric acid?

People aren't following what you have done, because the steps you seem to be taking are not really in line with common methodology for refining gold filled.

Common methodology for the small refiner of gold filled:
Usually the material is baked to remove oils and plastic pieces. This will also oxidize some of the base metals. It is then digested in nitric acid, filtered, and the filtrate is baked again. (I don't personally re-bake it). Then you dissolve in aqua regia and precipitate the gold. The gold is then allowed to settle, filtered or decanted washed and melted.

First instruction: No more YouTube or other videos until you have adequate understanding of proper procedures. Most leave out too many steps.

Second: Carefully give us step by step, each thing you did to get this far. From feedstock to your currently finished product. Details are important if anyone is to help.

Third: You have come to the right place. All you have to do now it learn.

I’d love to offer a bit more, but these post surgical pain meds have me a bit too fuzzy to be commenting on specifics.

Time for more coffee.

I started with gold filled jewelry.. 14.2grams of 10K .....362.1grams of 14 K and
71.5 grams of 18K...Next, I divided out the amount of gold in each piece and took it times 3 to find my amount of inquarted silver I need. I went over it with a torch to get oils and impurities off of it. I then melted the gold and silver, then splashed in a big pot of water to make the silver/gold pieces look like corn flakes.

Next, I used a 3L beaker and placed the inquarted silver and gold into it, covered it up with distilled water, then cooked it with nitric acid. It took about 18 hours for the fumes to stop turning blue. I then rinsed off the nitric acid from the gold that was left. I sat in on wax paper to let it dry. They next morning the gold on a brand new pan to bake and dry. When it dried, I melted it into a brand new ingot with a brand new crucible.

I thought that since I am not wanting 999 fine, I can skip AR....Does this help

Also, the pan I used to dry it in the oven, looks bad.

Jkessans said:

I started with gold filled jewelry.. 14.2grams of 10K .....362.1grams of 14 K and
71.5 grams of 18K...(If that is all you started with...and it is gold filled, there is no way you got 8 troy ounces of gold from it. 8 grams maybe...) Next, I divided out the amount of gold in each piece and took it times 3 to find my amount of inquarted silver I need. I went over it with a torch to get oils and impurities off of it. I then melted the gold and silver, then splashed in a big pot of water to make the silver/gold pieces look like corn flakes.

Next, I used a 3L beaker and placed the inquarted silver and gold into it, covered it up with distilled water, then cooked it with nitric acid. It took about 18 hours for the fumes to stop turning blue. Nitric generally fumes a red color, I have never seen it turn blue. I then rinsed off the nitric acid from the gold that was left. I sat in on wax paper to let it dry. They next morning the gold on a brand new pan to bake and dry. When it dried, I melted it into a brand new ingot with a brand new crucible.

I thought that since I am not wanting 999 fine, I can skip AR....Does this help

Also, the pan I used to dry it in the oven, looks bad. No mention of washing the powders, at the least a thorough rinsing in water to remove residual acids would be an improvement.The use of PH papers would help determine that all the acid was removed.

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I see gold that looks like that bar quite often, and it comes from running the gold filled in an acid, nitric being the normal but what I see is done in hydrochloric. Once the majority of the base metals are removed it is washed in water and melted as is. The resulting gold comes in anywhere from 12K to 22K. That is not my procedure and while it works I don't care for it myself (I take pride in producing better quality even if it cost me a bit more). I have refined quite a lot of those gold buttons those guys are producing as well as refine the gold filled for their buyer (I sell to another buyer). I assume there is a reason their buyer has me refine his over those guys and I like to think I am doing a better job than they are. And there are many members here who are way better than me, people whom I have learned from and feel they deserve a pat on the back every time I feel rewarded for doing a good job in refining. Study the forum hard and you will be way ahead of the game the next time. By the way, my first button didn't look much better than yours but it has got better over time.

Jkessans said:

I started with gold filled jewelry.. 14.2grams of 10K .....362.1grams of 14 K and
71.5 grams of 18K...Next, I divided out the amount of gold in each piece and took it times 3 to find my amount of inquarted silver I need. I went over it with a torch to get oils and impurities off of it. I then melted the gold and silver, then splashed in a big pot of water to make the silver/gold pieces look like corn flakes.

Next, I used a 3L beaker and placed the inquarted silver and gold into it, covered it up with distilled water, then cooked it with nitric acid. It took about 18 hours for the fumes to stop turning blue. I then rinsed off the nitric acid from the gold that was left. I sat in on wax paper to let it dry. They next morning the gold on a brand new pan to bake and dry. When it dried, I melted it into a brand new ingot with a brand new crucible.

I thought that since I am not wanting 999 fine, I can skip AR....Does this help

Also, the pan I used to dry it in the oven, looks bad.

Click to expand...

blah blah hope this isn't your kitchen oven, but whatever, not my problem...hope there's no kids or wife that you would be poisoning.

A few things...one, if you had fumes turning blue, I'm curious what you did.

Now, to the "gold"... either you don't know what gold filled is and actually had karat scrap, and now have a bar of 90%+ gold weighing in at 8 oz (because the numbers work out pretty close for this) or you did have gold filled, and only dissolved about 1/2 of the base metals and have a bar of brass with some gold in it.

But what I can tell you is that you didn't start out with less than a pound of gold filled and end up with anything near 8 oz of gold, or for that matter, anything that even registers on the karat scale (which is greater than 30% by weight Au).

Shark
Thanks for your response. I did rinse out the powder and chunks a couple of times. I only used nitric acid. I never dissolved in hydrocloric and nitric (Aqua Regia). I’m going to keep after it. I have inherited around 30 lbs of jewelry, a lot of it old. How would you dry the powder. And what can I do to my existing bar.

Snoman701,

I may be missing something, this batch a jewelry were all rings and bands. That were all identified with a 10K, 14k, or 18k...these are gold filled correct? I thought I did the math correctly . 10kis 41.7% gold, 14k is 58.3% gold and 18k is 75% gold...I calculated 270 grams of gold pre-melt and acid wash...I finished with 251 grams take that times 31.103 and that would be 8.1 ozt of gold

Or is this considered scrap? I ran tests on them, and they were all accurate on the karat. What do I need to do with my existing bar. Thanks guys

By the way, no blue fumes, blue water, red fumes.

Gold filled is basically fancy gold plated.

It's marked 1/10 10k or something of the sort. It refers to a mechanically bonded gold foil over top of a base metal that will assay out to 1/10 (10%) of the mass of the metal jewelry less stainless or iron is made of 10k gold. Or something "close".

So what you had is commonly referred to as karat scrap. Where the whole object, once melted, will assay within 1/2 karat of the hallmark. It's generally marked with just 14k or 585 or similar.

Most good melt shops would have paid you 95%+ on Au basis, both before you inquarted, and after. They would actually prefer to buy it pre-processing, as then they get to keep the silver and palladium that's also in the alloy.

There's much better definitions out there, but that gives you the jist.

Study some more before continuing as you can cost yourself some gold. K represents Karat, not gold filled. Gold filled is usually marked as 1/20 12K, 1/10 14K or similar. Karat gold is pretty straight forward and how to work with it is found all over the forum.

As for drying powders, I do put the powders on low heat in a very clean beaker and watch it close until it stops steaming off moisture. If your beaker is dirty the powders will often stick to the glass and be harder to get out. With clean powders and clean glass I usually just bump the beaker against the heel of my hand a few times and it comes loose, often in large chunks. And when done right it will melt cleanly, with minimal residue in the dish or across the button/bar.

If you are out to refine to less than 999, there is no reason to even clean your bar. Less than 990 is recovery to me. In fact, snowman is right, karat gold jewelry will sell for a good price as is. That karat mark gives the buyer some protection as to exactly what he is getting. An unknown bar or button has the seller at the mercy of the buyer's testing abilities. When I get karat jewelry in decent shape, I often can sell a few pieces at more than scrap prices as someone wants it for jewelry and not the gold. If I was going to clean the bar, I would soak it in hot nitric, or hot hydrochloric acid until that discoloration went away, have it tested, then decide where to go from there.

Why would you try to make a bar from it? For a first time, a few grams would have been a good place to start while building some confidence as you learn.



Here is one of many post's about inquartering karat gold, there are many more to be found with the search engine, and way more information on many other refining subjects as well. Take some time and study a few of them, they can teach you much more than I can, even then I don't mind trying to point new people in the right direction.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=355

One more tid bit, study up on the proper terminology, it will help you to better explain things when you need to ask questions.

Thanks you all. I’m going to keep going at it.

Thanks for all your help. This board is very handy! Take a look at this. I’m fired up! I can’t wait for the assay!