inquart question

I have not inquarted any karat gold and I have some that I need to do. About 1/3 of it is white gold and the rest yellow gold. Once I get the stones out, is it safe to mix the two colors as it is all 14K, then add the silver to inquart with?

The most common white metals that form the white gold alloy are nickel, palladium, platinum, and manganese.

I see no problem with mixing the lot.

Although with excess silver (and the white gold), you may be able to get some of the platinum to follow the nitric digestion, but then you will also be dealing with gold powder instead of the honeycomb form of gold in the nitric step...

It would be nice for it to follow the nitric if only to help purify the gold content. Most of the white gold is really nice jewelry but has a lot of wear and looks fairly old. The yellow gold is fairly recent and with the exception of a couple of crosses are pretty basic with minimal stones. Now to finish up the current job and I can get on with this batch.

Thanks, butcher.

British white gold 18k alloys can have 9-15 % palladium and the only platinum I believe you could have is the claws but that’s unusual unless it’s large diamonds so chances are there is no platinum but potentially palladium which can be recovered by producing silver chloride first, filtering and then cementing the solution with copper if the volume justifies the effort, if not cement all the nitrate solution and keep the cemented silver for any more inquarts you may have in the future.