# My first button!!



## gold4mike (Sep 15, 2010)

It's been roughly a year and a half since I found this wonderful forum. I've read (almost) every post on the forum, read Hoke, viewed Steve's videos and bought several items from his website. 

Due entirely to the knowledge I've gained from this forum I have finally taken some of my material through to completion. The source material was 5 kilograms of edge fingers from slot processors, RAM, ISA, PCI, AGP and riser cards. It weighs 21.5 grams and I'll probably get another 4 or five grams from the final rinse of the fingers as I toss the fiberglass. I processed roughly a kilogram at a time through A/P, dumped them into a holding tub, dumped in more fresh fingers until all were done. The holding tub still contains a substantial amount of flakes.

Every step went off without a hitch with the exception of melting. When I let it cool a bit to remove from the dish I found it was stuck. I reheated it, added more Borax, got it to slide around the dish, them quenched it in a stainless steel pan full of cold water. It shows a grainy crystalline structure on the backside from (I believe) the cooling and reheat. My picture of that came out too blurry to see clearly.

Thank you to everyone on the forum! I've started processing my next 10 kilogram batch of fingers as well as 500 grams of buttery yellow, fully coated pins so I'm hoping for another similar button soon.


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## darshevo (Sep 15, 2010)

Thats a good looking button congrats!

-Lance


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## goldenchild (Sep 15, 2010)

Excellent and congrats. From how high up did you drop the gold into the SS container? The button is quite flat 8) Also, dont forget to let a copper pipe or buss bar soak in your AP fluids to ensure you get any gold that may have gone into solution. Congradulations again!


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## gold4mike (Sep 15, 2010)

I dropped it from less than a foot into about 4 inches of cold water. It was still pretty solid from the original melt - I simply reheated it enough to get it to free itself from the dish and then dumped it immediately into the stainless pan.

I'm still running the A/P - it has grown in volume with the wash acid and wash water from cleaning the powder. I will follow your advice when I get ready to discard the A/P. I have a lot of brown sediment in the bucket. Some of it is probably gold, much of it is probably dirt and crud that was on the fingers. I have begun to rinse them well with water before putting them in the A/P bucket in an effort to reduce the amount of garbage.

As we say in the computer (and refining) world: Garbage In Garbage Out

Does anyone have advice as to what filter paper to use when I filter the A/P bucket before I prepare to discard it? I want to be able to catch the finer particles that have made it through my coffee filters. I do have a Buchner funnel and vaccum pump. I have been careful not to discard ANYTHING that I wasn't 100% sure did not contain any gold.

I documented most of this process on video from start to finish and would put it on Youtube and link it here, but I captured my wife's license plate several times in the video and don't want to invite trouble! I might have to enlist LazerSteve's editing capabilities to see if we can remove that part of it.


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## Platdigger (Sep 15, 2010)

Nice! 8)


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## goldenchild (Sep 15, 2010)

Use the buchner setup. If the particles are very fine I would use whatman # 5 filter paper. Then when its all filtered you can either put the filter paper in some AR and refine it or put the filter paper into your burn box for later processing. If you'd like I can edit your video. Its not that hard to do. Plus I would love a sneak preview :mrgreen:


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## Oz (Sep 15, 2010)

If the particles are so fine that they pass a coffee filter I would just add a drop of dish liquid to your container and let it set for a week. At that time siphon off the top of your AP for reuse and digest the fines left in the bottom.

Small pore filters can clog rapidly even under vacuum so I avoid them when I can.


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## dtectr (Sep 16, 2010)

Oz said:


> If the particles are so fine that they pass a coffee filter I would just add a drop of dish liquid to your container and let it set for a week. At that time siphon off the top of your AP for reuse and digest the fines left in the bottom.
> 
> Small pore filters can clog rapidly even under vacuum so I avoid them when I can.


 So true! Its unbelievable how fine the particulate is, even though its visible to the naked eye. 
if you're dead set set on filtering - I believe that Lazersteve has recommended the Charmin plug to use for fine particulate matter at times. though you need a fiberglass plug for sulfuric, the Charmin plug is easily incineratable (is that a word?) when the time comes.
But like Oz, i'm avaoiding filtration until final filter of silver before drop.


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## gold4mike (Sep 16, 2010)

Thanks everyone for the advice on the fine powder, several good ideas to choose from. I think I'll try the Charmin plug and accumulate those with my filters until it looks like I have enough to be worth the time to process.

I'll have to try the dish liquid idea also. I have two beakers of solution that have particles so fine that, after a week of settling, have moved down the beaker about 1-1/2 inches from the top and stopped. They don't seem to want to make it to the bottom. I might try sitting them on my central A/C unit to vibrate them, as I've seen someone else post that suggestion.


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## goldenchild (Sep 16, 2010)

dtectr said:


> the Charmin plug is easily incineratable (is that a word?) .



Easily incinerated... if you're keeping count :lol:


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## plamenppp (Sep 16, 2010)

It reminds me for my first gold button. Your is much better and bigger than mine. Keep learning and melting. 

Good Luck!


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