Thank you to all the moderators and active members for this wonderful resource.
I have been studying this forum and Hoke for several months, and after finally building my fume hood I got to work.
I inquarted some carat scrap and upon digesting the 6k gold cornflakes with 50.50 nitric acid solution I discovered some strange crystals.
At first it appeared to be a gel, but it also looked like clear little sheets. It almost looked like mica and was very shiny and beautiful when swirled. Even though it still acted like a gel when decanted.
It settled quickly and dissolved completely when washed with warm DI water.
After several cycles through nitric and DI water washes, I have nice clean light orange brown colored gold and think I am ready for the AR stage
The only other thing to add is that I used quite an excess of Borax during the melt, and had some sand like slag that made its way into the inquarted gold cornflakes.
My questions are.....
1. do you think these are indeed lead nitrate crystals? Or somehow related to the borax? Or something else entirely?
2. If lead nitrate, where could the lead have come from? This was all Italian gold, mostly 18k (so I was told). And the silver was 1 oz rounds I bought from a reputable coin and jewelry store.
2. Having done a meticulous nitric digestion of the inquarted gold, will I further need to worry about lead in the AR stage of processing? (Adding a few drops of sulfuric acid perhaps?)
3. When recovering the silver, will washing the silver chloride in boiling water be enough to remove all of the lead?
Thank you so much for your time, Vinny