Recommended setup to process 350oz of scrap jewery per week

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edi gold said:
Xen
reading your post, I highly suggest you start walking prior to running (refining 350oz per week)
Do what 4metals suggested in the post right above mine.
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Right but the 150oz/week buyer says all or nothing and wants a contract.
I am looking for ways to walk and will test things on a smaller scale to make sure we have no hiccups.

edi gold said:
My question for you is. What accountability must you be at to be able to purchase the 350oz of scrap ?
What is your fine gold outlet, willing to pay you over spot for your finished product?
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Buyer is paying just a small bit over spot with shipping and insurance. They do not NEED us but would be willing to do business locally with us if we can provide what they need for a similar price. They would buy at spot from us and be buying local.
We have verbal agreements with seller and buyer now but am working on getting at Letter of Intent from both.
All parties involved have great banking relationships including our side so we are exploring letters of credit or credit line with a mutual bank.
Worse case we do know others that can come up with hard cash to jump start things if we needed to do such.
In my perfect world the bank would give us a temporary credit line that would appease the seller and things will be settled when the buyer gets delivery. Only need $150,000 to float for a couple days or a week most. The first deal is the hardest until all parties are comfortable with it.
If we could pickup scrap in the morning refine in a day and deliver the next morning. There might not be a need to float anything if there is enough trust involved.

I also wonder if we could work it out so the buyer actually pays the seller for the gold then pays us the refining cut upon delivery...

But then the problem is security. Who ever possesses the gold is the one that should be taking the risk ideally and should have put up the cash sense gold is near cash. If stolen it can not be replaced.

All things we have been thinking about and trying to work out. Refining is only a part of the whole deal and big deals do not come without a lot of negotiating and planning.

I am hoping to get a lot of these details worked out on the biz side before I do any major purchasing on refining equipment.

Xen
 
The basic assay kit that Action Mining sells for $1500 lacks one very important thing - an analytical balance. Instead, they give you a comparator, which is a loupe magnifier or small microscope with a measuring scale built into it. In other words, you measure the diameter of the bead, instead of actually weighing it, and then use a funky chart to estimate the weight. Also, you have to estimate the ratio of silver/gold in the bead by color. Terrible system. To me, this is a monetary disaster waiting to happen, especially when dealing with something valuable like karat gold. You would probably be more accurate by going by the markings on the jewelry and eliminating the assay. A .0001g analytical balance would cost an additional $1500, more or less. It's a necessity.
 
Xen
I think you might have an easier route to financing the deal than you think.
If your seller is sending his scrap to the US for sale then he will have to wait until it arrives before getting payment or even part payment until it's melted and assayed. That should give you 24 - 48 hours of a window to refine his metals and sell to your end user. The same no doubt applies to your buyer no metal until the funds are sent.
If as you say both partys know each other and you can act as the intermediary basically brokering the transaction you can also get them to agree a date of fixing the price so you don't take a risk on the price movements which can quickly erode your margins.
If you set this up properly you should be able to process the gold within the window but bear in mind that you will not get all the gold out that you expect so allow 1% of the metal to be in the system,this is recoverable,it's not lost, but will need concentrating to be economical to recover.
 
4metals: Do you actually use oxygen or compressed air for the NOx scrubber?. Can you further describe your system?. Mine was a simple series of water tanks where the NOx and air was bubbled in the first tank and then the bubbles passed through the remaining connected in series tanks. It wasn't 100% efficient, but adequate for those small operations.

IMHO: After rereading this thread and the OP's intended operation and further information he has provided, I now think that the OP has a potential disaster on wheels in his hands, and that he'll do well taking things very slowly and carefully. Remember that you can lose a lot more than the gold or money in this business, specially in Central America. The technical part is the easy part.:cry:

The OP has not stated yet on what specific terms/prices he intends to purchase the gold or sell it, so really we do not even know if he has a potential viable operation or a dream in the clouds. At this point I would bet his seller wants to sell at premium over spot and get paid in advance and his buyer wants to buy at discount and pay a week later...sigh. You haven't said either if the buyer is willing to buy at all times and the seller want to sell everyday. Sometimes when prices move one of your sides will not want to fix the price, etc, etc, etc x etc one hundred times more etc. Ideally you want to put yourself in the position of not taking price risk/any risk and just collect your margin. How do you plan to achieve that?.

mic: Don't give it another thought. Consider it all a testosterone release!. :lol:

p.s.: Do you see that pic below my moniker showing several bars of gold?. That is a stash that the Colombian authorities seized from a truck driver that was covering a route between Colombia and Venezuela. Nobody has laid claim to the gold yet. Who knows where the gold is at this very moment. It happened a few weeks ago. Do you think the owner is really thinking about how much nitric acid he's going to use in his next batch?.:lol:
 
gold chloride,

If dissolving silver in nitric, no chlorides, the fume will be NOx which will convert to HNO3 if the reaction is carried out in an oxygen environment. The nitric acid builds up in concentration to about 50% acid which can be reused. The nitric strength is measured via hydrometer.
nitric fume scrubber.JPG
When the acid is drawn off it is replaced with distilled water. The system is purged with oxygen before the reaction is kicked off and the bubbles in the glass cylinder give an indication of flow rate.

Obviously the entire system has to be air tight.

This system was called the Johnson system and more details can be had from Butts & Coxe.

And you thought I didn't recycle anything! :lol:
 
4metals said:
The system is purged with oxygen before the reaction is kicked off and the bubbles in the glass cylinder give an indication of flow rate.
Click to expand...

I particularly like the use of the spray paint tool to simulate the BFRC :lol:
 
4metals said:
And you thought I didn't recycle anything!
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Oh come on 4metals, you are a refiner! That is what we do, it is your vocation and nature to recycle everything!

Very nice drawing.
 
Last time we checked with seller, it seemed we would be able to get the gold content at 90% of the value. I have a meeting today and will know more soon

The other thing I/we need to keep in mind is we know old time miners in the countryside that just dig for nuggets. The idea also is to provide them equipment to make their life more easy in return for selling us their gold. They are selling cheap now. So any refining operation for jewelry I hope, could help us process ore to some degree in the future but I realize some of the processing and equipment will be different.
 
xenfasa said:
Last time we checked with seller, it seemed we would be able to get the gold content at 90% of the value. I have a meeting today and will know more soon
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350oz a week @ 90% Accountability ? Thats big bucks, even if you just broker the material.
 
4metals said:
gold chloride,

If dissolving silver in nitric, no chlorides, the fume will be NOx which will convert to HNO3 if the reaction is carried out in an oxygen environment. The nitric acid builds up in concentration to about 50% acid which can be reused. The nitric strength is measured via hydrometer.
View attachment 1
When the acid is drawn off it is replaced with distilled water. The system is purged with oxygen before the reaction is kicked off and the bubbles in the glass cylinder give an indication of flow rate.

Obviously the entire system has to be air tight.

This system was called the Johnson system and more details can be had from Butts & Coxe.

And you thought I didn't recycle anything! :lol:
Click to expand...

Johnson System, Chapter 16 from Butts & Coxe.
 

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