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Q-Ball

Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2020
Messages
12
Location
Minnesota
Wasn’t sure where to post this so I put in here. I’ve never joined a forum before.

My name is Quent. Q-Ball is what my friends at work call me. A guy with a shaved head who’s name starts with a Q. Lol. I guess it just kind of stuck.

I’ve always had a lot of interests mostly involving science of all types. Hobbies are how I experience the world and escape the daily grind. I spent a long time as a single dad loosing jobs to a bad economy but I just celebrated both my ninth anniversary with my best friend and my fifth anniversary at the best job I’ve ever had. Things are looking up.

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you all for the wealth of information on this forum. I am a nubie so it is very valuable to me. I didn’t post a greeting until now because when I find good information I tend to be like Johnny 5. Lol.

I hope everyone is well and I look forward to contributing when I get the chance.

Quent
 
Hello Quent,
I have to warn you this interest is addicting.
Gold fever has some vicious symptoms, it can make a grown man act silly, he can lose all common sense while he is under the fever...
Luckily educating yourself and learning patients is a good cure and preventive measure, and this forum has what you need to help you to relieve the symptoms when you do get the fever.

Welcome in, stay safe.
 
Now the hard work of practicing patience to learn to get that gold.

Think of it as a lifetime journey of learning, most mistakes are made from impatiently jumping in before gaining enough understanding, there is a learning curve at the beginning.

You can start slow and gain experience quickly, or jump in before understanding and spend your time chasing the gold down rabbit holes wondering what went wrong and spending your time learning to deal with messes instead of learning to recover gold (separate it from other metals) and then refine gold (bring that gold to higher purity).

In the general chat see:
The general reaction list.
Laser Steve's guide to the forum.

In the safety section:
Dealing with waste.
Other topics in this section to help protect you and others from the dangers involved.

Hoke's book to learn the basic principles (electronic scrap) was before Her time so it is not covered directly in Her book, but the principles she outlines still apply to the electronic scrap.
Te getting acquainted section of her book will introduce you to the reactions involved and what to expect, you can do many of your own experiments (your imagination along with education there is no limit) as she does in the book to gain a better understanding working with tests on a small scale, or how a certain metal or alloy reacts...

Cupric chloride referred to on the forum as AP acid/peroxide, is one of the workarounds that is very handy as well as HCl and sodium hypochlorite (bleach to dissolve gold), two very useful tools when dealing with electronic scrap.

The beginning is easier with study and starting on material that is easier to deal with, electronic scrap or ore, in general, is full of complications (making it hard to begin learning).

Sterling silver. memory fingers or karat gold will be easier materials to begin learning on, electronic scrap with tin-lead and a slew of other metals involved can be hard at first, but after gaining some education and learning on the simpler materials gaining some experience first will make dealing with electronic scrap much easier to learn.

Edited to attempt to compensate for my poor spelling. (something it seems I still have not educated myself enough on), or I just do not have enough notes for all of the words (some words I do not think I will ever learn to spell correctly.
 
Thank you for the information. Waste management was next on my list. I have a notebook that I’m working on to help myself keep track.

I’ve actually used the AP method to reduce some volume. I’ve been storing filters with flakes while I study up. A buddy of mine said he would help me build a fume hood. He has some solid carpentry skills.

I tend to take my time. I actually studied fungi in books for about four years before I went on my first foray. Now I see edibles by second nature. I can’t believe I’ve never joined a forum before. This is awesome. :D
 
That's what the Preview button is for. When I type a post, Windows' spell checker finds a lot of my mistakes, but it's always surprising how many things I want to change after I poke the Preview button and read my post in a slightly different view.

Welcome to the forum!

Be sure to read through my Tips thread.

Dave
 
Besides learning to recover and refine gold, the forum has helped me to improve or refine myself in different ways, such as helping me to improve my spelling skills, just like learning about gold, I still have a lot to learn, and bad habits to overcome, but thanks to my friends and the forum I can.

Dave, FrugalRefiner, has done a lot of work to help improve the forum, check out his wiki pages, and his printable copy of Hokes...
 
The problem I have with notes, besides being so many of them that it gets to where I can not weed through all of them to find anything of what I am looking for, almost all of my earlier notes always need to be updated, revised, scrapped, or rewritten so often as I learned more about the subject, adding that those to the books and boxes of the other notes collected over the years that also need to be updated well you talk about a mess (when I make one it is normally a good one).
 
I get what you’re saying. I also see where I could loose track. For me the biggest problem was overcoming the dyslexia side of it. Once I realized it would never change no matter what I did, I was able to relax a bit. From there it was all about prioritizing and weeding out the stuff I didn’t need handy and leaving the in-depth material in the books for later reference. I just printed Hoke’s book so I’ll be busy with that for a while. A big thanks to all that had a hand it making it available.
 
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