Very dangerous mistake, do not be me

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Does anyone know how many people die from this sort of thing over all? Like is there a RIP section of the forums? Wing suit divers have a high mortality rate but people still do it because the danger and the thrill are about even in their mind. I did some stupid dangerous stuff before I got on this forum but I am now doing nothing of the sort and spending that time and energy on designing a process that minimizes such exposure risks. I understand it is very real. Also the picture just looks like boogers to me what is the specific issue with them?
5-6 hours after I finished cleaning out my kiln, my snot was still laden with metals from the kiln, gold colored dust which I was chasing, oddly enough all the black soot from the organic compounds like the charcoal I burned were already gone. I normally snot rocket and had already showered allowing the steam to clear my sinus many hours earlier before this photo happened so I can only imagine what was coming out my nose previously. I am a licensed skydiver, its not the Wingsuits flyers dying so quickly as it is the BASE JUMPERS wearing wing suits and pushing the limit with whats called PROXIMITY flying, meaning you fly in very close proximity to things like cliff walls and the ground, ya know, the things that will kill you, just fly by waving and laughing at the reaper as closely as you can! You sound like you intend well, just never forget, when you think you know, you are confident you have it all figured out, always realize there's quite a lot you know nothing of!
 
Ah, just read your post after leaving the above comment....FACTS!
it's a fine balance between what you find acceptable and what not compared to the 'profits' to be made. "Is it worth it?"
Profit can be spending time doing something you like. It can also mean big piles of money. That's personal.

Safety is: consciously taking a calculated and acceptable risk.

Now risks must be known to assess and to be able to control.
That's why we need to share our experiences. gain knowledge of things that can go bad.

Then to determine how big a risk is, you need to know: probability of it actually happening, exposure to this event(time) and effect of the event.
Some effects are acceptable some are not, some probabilities and exposure time can be negligible, but if the effect is probably death, I would not take the risk.

You can not know everything and humans (should) keep learning every day.

Experience also means you are getting comfortable with a process and are taking bigger risks, out of routine. That's when exposure to accumulative toxins can get troublesome. Those toxins are some of the long list of chemicals our body can not deal with!

a lot of personal factor can play a role too. Did he have a depression or lots of worries on his head at one time, making himself a bit more careless? We don't know. It is a sad thing when someone dies, no matter why.

Be safe, have fun!

Martijn.
 
Heathenmojo

If You live in USA
and if closer to Arizona

Is Not in USA
there is mining history in almost of country

in Latin America
Mexico,Honduras,Dominican Republic,Haity,Chile
Chile have lot of Gold every where

In Europe
Denmark,Norway,Finland,France,Germany,Romania,Greece

Every Europe country have gold in their rivers

Basically Romanian are seating in a bed of Gold
there is lot of Gold in Romania
mostly Lode Gold

in Arizona mostly in the middle and northern
Arizona

there are lost of placer claims
and can still found gold

some places You maybe found gold nuggets
but is very rare
is mostly fine Gold
but gold is Gold

the only thing You going to need it ,is an Sluice box,water ,pick and chavels

and lots of discipline and a good set up
for your mining activities

I use Solar panels in my set up
for my water pump
and i have a generator as a back up.

i was using dry washer but i found out
that I was losing almost all the microscopy gold

Right now I only use Sluice box
even in northern Arizona
where i do almost all my mining work

and when i get my concentrate
i separate almost most of the gold

roast the black sand and grind it

then i panned to get most of the gold
and put the concentrate in a beaker

I add
HCL+ Potassium nitrate
to dissolve the gold

every one have their own measure

but i use depend on the amount of concentrate
i use 7 parts HCL and 1 part Potassium nitrate

if I still need more i add a bit more

I heater but not boiled
30 minutes
I filter out

denox it with Sulfamic acid
if you want to filter again do it

Precipitate with ferrous sulfate

let stand for almost 24 hrs

filter again
wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

put it in a beaker
and do the process again

but this I will precipitate it with Sodium metabisulfite

filter out and wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

then ready for melting

I apology my english
 
Last edited:
it's a fine balance between what you find acceptable and what not compared to the 'profits' to be made. "Is it worth it?"
Profit can be spending time doing something you like. It can also mean big piles of money. That's personal.

Safety is: consciously taking a calculated and acceptable risk.

Now risks must be known to assess and to be able to control.
That's why we need to share our experiences. gain knowledge of things that can go bad.

Then to determine how big a risk is, you need to know: probability of it actually happening, exposure to this event(time) and effect of the event.
Some effects are acceptable some are not, some probabilities and exposure time can be negligible, but if the effect is probably death, I would not take the risk.

You can not know everything and humans (should) keep learning every day.

Experience also means you are getting comfortable with a process and are taking bigger risks, out of routine. That's when exposure to accumulative toxins can get troublesome. Those toxins are some of the long list of chemicals our body can not deal with!

a lot of personal factor can play a role too. Did he have a depression or lots of worries on his head at one time, making himself a bit more careless? We don't know. It is a sad thing when someone dies, no matter why.

Be safe, have fun!

Martijn.
That is some true wisdom you just wrote there. So true, I'm not trying to die anytime soon so the moment I realize I'm taking too much risk or find myself in danger I ws unaware of, I make corrections to minimize the danger and risk. When I started tattooing I had no idea about blood born pathogens and cross contamination, sterilized my needles with rubbing alcohol and a match, then got wiser and started boiling them for 20 -30 minutes, before wising up even more to bake them in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes....hahahaha, you I'm not to proud to admit my ignorance. Eventually I ended up owning several autoclaves and had one of the best cross contamination techniques ever seen, cover pray bottles and anything handled with barrier plastics, breaking equipment down as to insure not touching with a bloody hand anything not protected or bound for the autoclave, 30 years and I'm still learning, always a slightly better way or something perhaps over looked, staying humble and not being a smarty pants know it all is key. What you stated about comfort and routine being one of the largest unseen risk is indeed fact. As a licensed skydiver, 500 jumps and I'm still here, luck of the Irish on more than one occasion, but the moment you get comfortable jumping out of that airplane 2 1/2 miles above the planet earths surface is the moment you are in serious danger. Margin for error in skydiving is like zero, and after maybe a 100 jumps I found myself losing focus, not double checking my gear, ask myself the what ifs and preplanning what do I do, it was routine and I was comfortable, I was forgetting how serious the consequences of failure could be for me. You are super intelligent it is obvious, the fact you even throw in depression or other issue causing mistakes on technique and that is indeed a root cause of so many accidents, stress, lack of sleep etc, even weakening his immune system perhaps due to stress, wife left, heart broken not eating, toxins spread throughout the body stored in fat cells suddenly flood in to already overburdened organs, far too many possibilities in this universe any of us to have all our bases truly covered and safe. I shared my foolishness here in the hopes to help others avoid the same. I truly forgot my respirator, but figured no big deal, I was outdoors, took care not to create excessive dust, but my dumb ass was down wind for one I confess, yeah I know better, and I remember catching a few face full of dust and holding my breath till the air cleared, even walked away once or twice, but there I was, thinking it was no big deal, yup this right here. Anyways, stay awesome man!

PS. Anyone living their life doing things just for the money is a fool, so many better ways to die than chasing little pieces of paper with dead presidents printed upon.
 
Heathenmojo

If You live in USA
and if closer to Arizona

Is Not in USA
there is mining history in almost of country

in Latin America
Mexico,Honduras,Dominican Republic,Haity,Chile
Chile have lot of Gold every where

In Europe
Denmark,Norway,Finland,France,Germany,Romania,Greece

Every Europe country have gold in their rivers

Basically Romanian are seating in a bed of Gold
there is lot of Gold in Romania
mostly Lode Gold

in Arizona mostly in the middle and northern
Arizona

there are lost of placer claims
and can still found gold

some places You maybe found gold nuggets
but is very rare
is mostly fine Gold
but gold is Gold

the only thing You going to need it ,is an Sluice box,water ,pick and chavels

and lots of discipline and a good set up
for your mining activities

I use Solar panels in my set up
for my water pump
and i have a generator as a back up.

i was using dry washer but i found out
that I was losing almost all the microscopy gold

Right now I only use Sluice box
even in northern Arizona
where i do almost all my mining work

and when i get my concentrate
i separate almost most of the gold

roast the black sand and grind it

then i panned to get most of the gold
and put the concentrate in a beaker

I add
HCL+ Potassium nitrate
to dissolve the gold

every one have their own measure

but i use depend on the amount of concentrate
i use 7 parts HCL and 1 part Potassium nitrate

if I still need more i add a bit more

I heater but not boiled
30 minutes
I filter out

denox it with Sulfamic acid
if you want to filter again do it

Precipitate with ferrous sulfate

let stand for almost 24 hrs

filter again
wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

put it in a beaker
and do the process again

but this I will precipitate it with Sodium metabisulfite

filter out and wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

then ready for melting

I apology my english
Thank you for sharing your recipe for success, I'm trying to simply go fire, high heat and as chemical free as possible save for the flux, but I found myself wishing for a huge jug of Nitric acid the other day!
 
Heathenmojo

If You live in USA
and if closer to Arizona

Is Not in USA
there is mining history in almost of country

in Latin America
Mexico,Honduras,Dominican Republic,Haity,Chile
Chile have lot of Gold every where

In Europe
Denmark,Norway,Finland,France,Germany,Romania,Greece

Every Europe country have gold in their rivers

Basically Romanian are seating in a bed of Gold
there is lot of Gold in Romania
mostly Lode Gold

in Arizona mostly in the middle and northern
Arizona

there are lost of placer claims
and can still found gold

some places You maybe found gold nuggets
but is very rare
is mostly fine Gold
but gold is Gold

the only thing You going to need it ,is an Sluice box,water ,pick and chavels

and lots of discipline and a good set up
for your mining activities

I use Solar panels in my set up
for my water pump
and i have a generator as a back up.

i was using dry washer but i found out
that I was losing almost all the microscopy gold

Right now I only use Sluice box
even in northern Arizona
where i do almost all my mining work

and when i get my concentrate
i separate almost most of the gold

roast the black sand and grind it

then i panned to get most of the gold
and put the concentrate in a beaker

I add
HCL+ Potassium nitrate
to dissolve the gold

every one have their own measure

but i use depend on the amount of concentrate
i use 7 parts HCL and 1 part Potassium nitrate

if I still need more i add a bit more

I heater but not boiled
30 minutes
I filter out

denox it with Sulfamic acid
if you want to filter again do it

Precipitate with ferrous sulfate

let stand for almost 24 hrs

filter again
wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

put it in a beaker
and do the process again

but this I will precipitate it with Sodium metabisulfite

filter out and wash it with hot water 5 or 6 times

then ready for melting

I apology my english

That is so cool. It reads like a poem..

On a different note, So I met a kid who is 13, home schooled, and a little genius. He was doing electrolysis, bottling hydrogen and 3d printing rockets and little pop guns. He found out quickly that his method produced a little chlorine gas from the table salt to make the water conducting. He stopped, and built a lab outside and started wearing PPE. Kid is going places.
 
Well, if that is the case, no one here gets out of this story alive, I've done many jobs exposing me to health hazards, and typically no matter diligent care given, the risk is rarely reduced to zero, so its become merely a question of what do I enjoy doing enough thats worth dying for!!
Exactly! You hit the nail on the head. A few months ago I was working framing a house, and the garage door contractor fell off the second story and hit concrete... He died in the hospital the following day. I didn't see it happen, fortunately. We all take risks every day, even driving to and from wherever. We are having faith in the other drivers on the road not to be drunk, or texting.

Obviously safety is CRITICAL when working with toxic fumes, and highly caustic acids, I am not negating that one bit, but there is a risk/reward associated with everything we do in life.
 
Exactly! You hit the nail on the head. A few months ago I was working framing a house, and the garage door contractor fell off the second story and hit concrete... He died in the hospital the following day. I didn't see it happen, fortunately. We all take risks every day, even driving to and from wherever. We are having faith in the other drivers on the road not to be drunk, or texting.

Obviously safety is CRITICAL when working with toxic fumes, and highly caustic acids, I am not negating that one bit, but there is a risk/reward associated with everything we do in life.
This member will not see this.
He has been banned for various reasons.
If you see a user with a line through their name they are banned.

And there is no such thing as Caustic Acid, they are opposites.
It is either Acidic (pH lower than 7) or Caustic (pH higher than 7)
In chemistry these things matter.
 
This member will not see this.
He has been banned for various reasons.
If you see a user with a line through their name they are banned.

And there is no such thing as Caustic Acid, they are opposites.
It is either Acidic (pH lower than 7) or Caustic (pH higher than 7)
In chemistry these things matter.
The definition of Caustic is as follows;

Caustic:

1.
able to burn or corrode organic tissue by chemical action.
 
This member will not see this.
He has been banned for various reasons.
If you see a user with a line through their name they are banned.

And there is no such thing as Caustic Acid, they are opposites.
It is either Acidic (pH lower than 7) or Caustic (pH higher than 7)
In chemistry these things matter.
I did not see a line through their name. Thank you for the tip though
 
The definition of Caustic is as follows;

Caustic:

1.
able to burn or corrode organic tissue by chemical action.
I went back and checked, you seem to be correct.
I find myself using Caustic only for Alkalis, which is how we usually use it in my language.
I will correct my ways, thanks.
 
Just as a heads up.
If you hover your mouse pointer over the Avatar of a user or click on it.
You will see information of when they were last seen on the forum.
I am on a cell phone. Maybe that is why I'm having some issues figuring out how to efficiently navigate everything.
 
Only staff members see the line through a members name. This came up in 2022, and management created a custom title of "Banned" that all members could see, but something seems to have disabled it. We've asked management to look into it.

Dave
 

Latest posts

Back
Top