# just curios why my gold discombuberated in melt dish



## steyr223 (Nov 3, 2013)

Hey guys sorry for the big word in the title :mrgreen: 
my normal stock into Hcl then to CuCL
Foils and mask into bleach/Hcl. Filtered with fiberglass charmin plug , tested with stanouss 
AuCl at this point was beautiful golden yellow.
sit in Sun for 4 hours then steamed for 2 hours under vacuum .
Added 3 grams of smb which dropped tan powders
Seasoned new melting dish with new borax ,added powders .heated with oxy/acetylene 
Ususlly powders would form what look like islands floating around but this time around the point of looking wet but still no islands all the. Color dissapeared in an instance and all what seemed left was borax

At this point i turned up the heat and the melting dish turned purple or dark brown/black (pic) 

I thought impurities. And saw 1 little bb form and a couple of dots that i couldnt move i added prills of borax which made things appear easier but wasnt

Not sure but this could maybe have some meri . At the end of the melt i noticed silver or solder color flakes that would break away and float on the barax but would not adhere to the gold

Any input would be greatly appreciated 
Thanks steyr223


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## steyr223 (Nov 3, 2013)

Sorry pics


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## niteliteone (Nov 3, 2013)

I don't see the meticulous rinses that Harold often mentions after dropping the gold from solution :shock: 
(said in a good way)
That could have accounted for a lot of trash making its way to the melting dish, causing the dark mess.


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## steyr223 (Nov 4, 2013)

Thanks niteliteone
Normally i only need to do harolds washes when dropping from a dirty solution ,i.e.,porcelain chips when Hcl and a nitre are mixed or when silver is bothersome and other problematic base metals

```I am not interested in four 9's as it pays the same as 2 9's (been close .9982 and it cost me more than my profit :lol:````

from CuCl or the sulfuric cell i have never had a problem with just adding Hcl to my powder container (usually a gatoraid bottle) which sits in the passenger seat untill refining 

The only thing different this time from literally hundreds of melts was the Hcl method instead of mechanical depopulation of my boards, and i processed 3 times the amount i normally do before refining 

Jusr when you think you know..........
Thanks steyr223


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## niteliteone (Nov 4, 2013)

steyr223 said:


> (snip)
> The only thing different this time from literally hundreds of melts was the Hcl method instead of mechanical depopulation of my boards, and i processed 3 times the amount i normally do before refining
> 
> Jusr when you think you know..........
> Thanks steyr223


By HCl method, do you mean that you de-populated the boards using HCl :?: 

If this is so, then you could have had a carry-over of lead and tin from the solder remaining from the boards, contaminating the gold foils, which could carry over through the rest of the process.
Just a thought 8)


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## steyr223 (Nov 4, 2013)

niteliteone said:


> By HCl method, do you mean that you de-populated the boards using HCl :?:
> 
> If this is so, then you could have had a carry-over of. Led and tin from the solder remaining from the boards, contaminating the gold foils, which could carry over through the rest of the process.
> Just a thought 8)



Yes on the HCl method 
Yes that was also a thought of my own
Please correct me if i am wrong but i have read so many times that with copper chloride you didnt have to worry about ti or lead until a substantial amount of solder was introduced into the solution.

This is about 3 gallons and is only 
3 weeks old (just retired my very first mix of CuCl after 1 1/2 years of use


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## steyr223 (Nov 4, 2013)

Sorry i hit the screen and my phone wont let me see below the bottom of this window after moving yhe cursor

Anyways the led and tin are dissolutioned in the CuCl but i guess with what we do there can always be carryover and dragdown

Thanks steyr223 rob


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## niteliteone (Nov 4, 2013)

Not to mention it takes very little of either to cause problems down the line.

PS. Your dish looked the same as one I did a few years ago and not washing between dropping and melting was the problem then. 3 grams of powder left me with a 0.5 gram BB and a black/purple 'ish dish


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## steyr223 (Nov 4, 2013)

Really ok ! 
I guess i start washing every time
Thank you very much

After reviewing this thread i have come to realize that it can only be what was said above about the carry over from doing the boards with hcl as there is nothing different i have done


Thanks again
Steyr223. Rob


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## moose7802 (Nov 20, 2013)

I wash everything no matter how clean the solution. It pays as I have never melted a button that didn't form a beautiful little sometimes big pipe. The washes are worth every minute or hour or two in my case. I wash till my hcl has no color nor my water washes have color and give them a good HARD boil.

Tyler


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## Plasmajunkie (Dec 21, 2013)

Can the melting dishes be cleaned in NHO3 ?


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## butcher (Dec 21, 2013)

The nitric acid is HNO3 (not NHO3), yes you could dissolve most of the metals off of the melting the dish (that nitric can attack). 

How well it would work to clean with acid would somewhat depend on how bad the dish was if the dish is heavily coated in base metal slag glass, you may not have much luck with acids.

An acid may not work well attacking this glass slag.

Even if you can clean a dish in an acid or wet solution the dish will soak up moisture, this moisture will have to be driven out of the dish before you get it hot again, even the little moisture a melting dish can absorb from sitting out in the air can break the dish when heated, if this moisture is not driven out, in preparing the dish for a melt.

Harold posted good instructions on cleaning the dish with borax, sodium carbonate (soda ash), and your torch, this way you melt and pour out most of the glass.

Melting dishes are very cheap just a couple of dollars, if I have a dirty dish I will clean it with soda ash and the torch, my older dishes get downgraded to melting the dirtier melts, my new dish is used for high grade melts.

I have never tried to clean a melting dish in acid, I use the torch with flux to clean the dish, and the dish gets downgraded in the job it is used for depending on the shape of the dish, if I need another dish I use one, I am very frugal and try to get the most use out of my tools, but when it comes to melting the gold, were you spend time and money on to get it pure, a new three dollar dish is very little cost to melt a couple of thousand dollars worth of gold in, and insure you are not contaminating the gold.


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## Geo (Dec 22, 2013)

Rob, that sure looks like copper to me. i know that just plain water boiling will dissolve borax but not too sure about the borax thats contaminated. if it were mine, i would try it anyway just to be sure. boil it in water all day and then set it out in the open air. any remaining borax will turn white and chalky and you may be able to chip some off. if it doesnt all come off, you can try it again. ive used different acids removing the dark flux but to tell you the truth, i just leave them exposed to the sun and weather until the borax crumbles. i almost always find a good amount of gold prills when cleaning my dishes.


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## steyr223 (Dec 25, 2013)

Thanks guys
sorry about response time I usually don't
Look at the help needed section since I learned
To just go to new posts but I notice they can get by
You pretty quick.

Tyler thanks I agree
butcher same
Geo I will try.a boil in h2o all day (I can speed it up
If I use my oxygen/acetylene) :shock: just kidding

I thought Harold talks about sulfuric acid for cleaning dishes
Thanks steyr223 rob
Thanks steyr223 rob


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## Harold_V (Dec 26, 2013)

steyr223 said:


> I thought Harold talks about sulfuric acid for cleaning dishes


Nope. I always used soda ash and borax. 

Harold


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## steyr223 (Dec 26, 2013)

Merry Christmas Harold
thanks


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## Harold_V (Dec 26, 2013)

steyr223 said:


> Merry Christmas Harold
> thanks


And to you as well.
In regards to using sulfuric, it could be that you have confused my comments of cleaning buttons of gold with dilute sulfuric. I did that routinely, but never cleaned dishes by that method. I'd have been concerned about the degradation of the integrity of the dish (perhaps for no good reason). 

Harold


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## nh6886 (Dec 29, 2013)

Steyr223,

Philddreamer turned me on to using 35% sulfuric plus a little heat to clean melting dishes and I does a great job. I prefer Phil's method for cleaning flux from fairly clean dishes. You can reuse this solution many times. When it slows down, dilute and filter you may be surprised by how much metal you recover.
However if the dish in the picture were mine I would use Harold's soda ash and borax method to collect the metal prills for refining at a later date. I know there are different schools of thought about whether or not this is a reduction but whatever the case the metal oxides will repot as prills and the flux clears up. You can use a little extra borax at the end as a kind of hot rinse to remove the last of the old material and they look like new, although slightly thinner dish. 
I do have to say that like Butcher, when melting refined metals I use a dish that I reserve for this purpose.

All the Best,
John


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## steyr223 (Jan 2, 2014)

thanks guys 
up till now I just used sanding disks ,being more interested in getting the dish clean enough to do another
melt and not the value I could get back
I did however save all my dust
my friends think I am nuts :shock: 

ps these dishes take a heck of a lot of abuse and I have never had one break while doing a melt( 1 moisture boom but while I was seasoning) :mrgreen:


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## butcher (Jan 2, 2014)

steyr223,
Your friends are right.
You are nuts


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## moose7802 (Jan 2, 2014)

I know Richard means that in the best way possible! :lol: 

Tyler


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## Plasmajunkie (Jan 15, 2014)

butcher said:


> The nitric acid is HNO3 (not NHO3), yes you could dissolve most of the metals off of the melting the dish (that nitric can attack).
> 
> How well it would work to clean with acid would somewhat depend on how bad the dish was if the dish is heavily coated in base metal slag glass, you may not have much luck with acids.
> 
> ...




After shipping it's more than just a couple of dollar's for Me.I had one slightly impure dish,minimal Copper contamination cleaned up and worked great with the HNO3.


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