# Almost ready to start



## glondor (Dec 17, 2010)

Hi all. I have some processors I am going to try to refine. I think I have everything I need. I would just like a quick primer on where to start. I have been reading here for months and I think I have a good idea of the various processes but could use a shove in the right direction. I have several pounds of each of these types. What process should I use. I know these are not high yield parts but I will use them for practice to get a process in place.












I have several pounds of fingers to work with as well. I believe these will keep me busy for a while. 











Any help would be appreciated. I am rereading hoke. again.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 17, 2010)

Run them in some hot hcl when the leggs seperate remove the fiber plates and finish the pins in hot HCL. Try to seperate the capacitors before you dissolve your gold. Then save them for future processing.


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## glondor (Dec 18, 2010)

Thank you. I will give it a go next week I hope.


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## lazersteve (Dec 18, 2010)

The legs of the P-III and P-IV green fiber cpus are soldered on and can easily be separated from the cpu housing by heating the cpu from the bottom with a hand torch and a giving the hot cpu a gentle tap on the side of a ceramic or metal dish. Don't overheat the cpu, just melt the solder or the cpu will catch fire and produce some very toxic smoke. Do this outside or under a fume hood. The hot pins will all fall of along with the capacitors and you can hand sort them from the tan colored capacitors when everything cools. If you use tight control on the heating of the pins you can harvest them and leave the capacitors behind still attached to the cpu housing since the capacitors tend take a little more heat to remove than the exposed pins do.

You'll get a bit of solder mixed in with the pins, break up any solder clumps you can and remove as much of the cold solder as you can by hand. The remaining solder and the pins will all get boiled in the hot 10-30% HCl (muriatic) acid, leaving the gold behind as a fine black/brown powder and possibly some foils after the bulk of the pins dissolve. 

The base metal of the legs is kovar which is notoriously hard to dissolve. A portion of the solder remaining on the pins will be dissolved, the rest stays behind as a dark colored powder mixed in with the gold.

Once the HCl has removed as much base metal as it will dissolve (no more tiny bubbles when a little fresh HCl is added), pour it off and treat the residual solids with a second batch of hot HCl acid as a clean up stage. Allow to cool to 20C, then pour/siphon off the dirty acid being very careful not to pour off any of the solid sediments along with the acid. 

Now treat the solid sediment using the Modified Poor Man's AR method starting at step #3:

Modified Poorman's AR

The green cpu housings have only traces of gold left in them and will require crushing and/or incineration to get the last of the gold out of them, so put them aside until you are properly equipped to handle them. The bulk of the gold in these new cpus is on the legs.

You can use also the Modified AR method to process the ceramic cpus.

The memory fingers can be harvested and processed using the Acid Peroxide method as demonstrated on my website videos. 

Here's some yield info:

Memory Finger Yields

I would start with a small sample of the various types of scrap you have (don't mix scrap types) and get acquainted with each process before jumping into a large batch. Start very small until you know what you are doing, then scale up.

You have a lot of work ahead of you with those cpus and your returns will be minimal due to the age of the bulk of the cpus (they are relatively new).

Steve


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## Oz (Dec 18, 2010)

I know we were asked about the cpu chips, but the fiber chips are some of the harder to start on even forgetting the low yield. You mentioned that you had a good supply of fingers as well. In my opinion fingers are the very best electronic scrap to learn on. 

Read up on the AP method (HCl and H2O2) for removing your gold foils from your card edges/fingers. Once removed you will have 22K gold or better foils. At that point we can walk you through how to digest your foils and precipitate your gold. There are several methods depending on your access to chemicals.

You have done well by spending several months reading before proceeding. I think Barrens would agree that your fingers are the best place to start if this is your first try.

Ps; as I type slow I see Steve has replied with good advice. Please do yourself a favor and read his AP data and start with your fingers in order to get familiar with the process.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 18, 2010)

Oz said:


> I know we were asked about the cpu chips, but the fiber chips are some of the harder to start on even forgetting the low yield. You mentioned that you had a good supply of fingers as well. In my opinion fingers are the very best electronic scrap to learn on.
> 
> Read up on the AP method (HCl and H2O2) for removing your gold foils from your card edges/fingers. Once removed you will have 22K gold or better foils. At that point we can walk you through how to digest your foils and precipitate your gold. There are several methods depending on your access to chemicals.
> 
> ...



Yes I would agree with this 100%. The pins can be a pain if you don't know what you are doing or what to look for in your reactions. And nitric is a waste of time on te pins.


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## glondor (Dec 18, 2010)

Thanks guys. I will try to get a positive outcome from this batch. I will take advise and start on the fingers while I torch the pins from the cpu/s. Would a sulfuric cell have any use with any part of these? I have purchased some vids and stuff from lazersteve for some plated and when it arrives i will get that In operation as well. Going to read about a/p method now.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 18, 2010)

glondor said:


> Thanks guys. I will try to get a positive outcome from this batch. I will take advise and start on the fingers while I torch the pins from the cpu/s. Would a sulfuric cell have any use with any part of these? I have purchased some vids and stuff from lazersteve for some plated and when it arrives i will get that In operation as well. Going to read about a/p method now.



Not likely, the pins would be so dense when put together that you will not get a correct flow of current to deplate the pins.
In the 1st picture you can see how close the pins pack together on the right side of the picture. In the 2nd picture you can see the size diffference in the pins, the ones on the left will be pins like you pull from mother boards or slot cards and the pins on the right are probably twice the size of the pins you will pull from the CPU's


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## glondor (Dec 18, 2010)

WOW lots of pins. The ones on the right from the chips, were these removed with hot hcl? they look very clean. In refrence to hot hcl, how hot? 50 -60 degrees C?


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## Barren Realms 007 (Dec 18, 2010)

glondor said:


> WOW lots of pins. The ones on the right from the chips, were these removed with hot hcl? they look very clean. In refrence to hot hcl, how hot? 50 -60 degrees C?


 
They were never installed on anything, and they are clean as a whistle.


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## glondor (Dec 18, 2010)

I gotta find where youse guys get this stuff....


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## gold4mike (Dec 22, 2010)

I agree with Glondor. NOW I'm jealous!!


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## glondor (Jan 28, 2011)

OK i have 5 lbs of pins from 1/2 of my processors. 











Hot hcl is the next step to remove the kovar. How much HCL for 5 pounds of pins? I prefer not to drain and fill acid if possible, as I am not so good at filtering yet. How long should it take in a crock pot? 
Update:
There is lots of black powder in the bottom of the bucket i soaked the processors in (to remove the legs). I suppose it may be gold as i believe the solder is in the acid. I will filter it and disolve a little in hcl/bleach and if it is positive for gold i will add it to the results from the pins.

I have a good haul of finger foils, I need to filter and check all the black powder in the foiles A/P buckets. I am using GSP's wick method but i seem to have been doing it wrong as it was not working, I reread the tutorial and discovered that my wick ( Fiberglass wood stove gasket) was not deep enough in the catch pail. Itseems to be working now.

Gold cell worked great, still have a little plated to do then I will try to filter and recover. No settling seems to be taking place in the cell tho. Very thick black acid. I do not think the acid was high enough concentration. ( pro flow from Rona) I think there is too much water in it.

Looking forward to posting my first bar soon.


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## samuel-a (Jan 28, 2011)

glondor 

You did good so far. 
At this flask volume (1 liter i guess) i assume you will need to decant and add fresh HCL in order to rid of all base metals.
You will know you are done once you see that the pins are only foils and do not settle very quickly. Don't worry about filtering, let it sit for a couple of hours before decanting, there is no need to decant 100% of the base metals solution, just pour as far as you can without disturbing the foils and then add the fresh acid. heat will speed thing up of course. 

The powders that in your bucket should be drained to a filter (make sure you wash the cpu's well with water), moved to a reaction flask to be treated with HCL + Cl for the gold.
Any left overs solids are probably PbCl, AgCl and organic material.


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## Scratch (Jan 28, 2011)

Wow....I'm anxious to see how much gold you get from them!


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## glondor (Jan 28, 2011)

Thanks Samuel-a I will work on this soon. I may wait a bit as I have another 10 lbs of ceramic processors soaking for pin removal right now. I will add them tomorrow if they are all free. Then a nice acid bath. 

Does the acid eventually wear out? Can it be reclaimed for reuse? I would like to reuse and recycle the HCL as much as possable.


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## samuel-a (Jan 29, 2011)

Yes, it have been discussed here before, you can preform a search ' AP rejuvenation '


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## Oz (Jan 29, 2011)

glondor said:


> Hot hcl is the next step to remove the kovar. How much HCL for 5 pounds of pins? I prefer not to drain and fill acid if possible, as I am not so good at filtering yet. How long should it take in a crock pot?
> Update:
> There is lots of black powder in the bottom of the bucket i soaked the processors in (to remove the legs). I suppose it may be gold as i believe the solder is in the acid. I will filter it and disolve a little in hcl/bleach and if it is positive for gold i will add it to the results from the pins.
> 
> ...



I am a bit confused here. Are you using only AP or are you confusing things in this post by also discusing and using a deplating cell using sulfuric acid?


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## glondor (Jan 29, 2011)

@ Samuel-a. Thanks . A/p rejuvenation. I knew that, as i stated before sometimes I don't see the forest for the trees. I used A/p for the fingers and kept it going with a bubbler stone and an occasional splash of peroxide, I just did not equate this as recycling HCL. My bad. As advised I just used HCl on the pins in some crock pots i purchased at the local thrift store with no peroxide. Made a bit of a mess that did as one of the crock pots boiled over during the night even though it was minus 20 degrees outside. They were in a large covered plastic tub, so no harm was done, just a bit of clean up . Now i understand A/P can be used for both processes. Many thanks for exposing different angles of the same process.

@ OZ Sorry for the confusion. Here is what i started,as mentioned in my first and third post. I put 13.649 kilos of trimmed fingers on to work in an A/P as per your advice. I just need to do some filtering and washes on the foils to prep for dissolving. I then took stock of my situation and decided I had the facility and supplies and time to do more, so i took Barren Realms and Laser Steve's Que and got one quarter of the processors (10 kilos) going to remove the legs. I now have most of the legs in a beaker, the acid is filtering via a wick . I still have about 30 kilos of processors to get started and am adding more all the time. 

My supplies arrived from Laser Steve and I stared a gold cell going as well to try my hand at the gold plated material I had acquired.

All the processes are working well and I do have several going at once and I need to work on timing and a bit of speed to make things a bit faster.. I am happy with the results so far and want to step up my production, so...

Just to add to the mix I am going to inquart some karat scrap and make some shot.
Can inquarted gold be parted with HCL/bleach if it is fine (small) enough? Not trying to reinvent any wheels i just want to avoid nitric for now. Time is not an issue.


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## lazersteve (Jan 29, 2011)

HCl-Cl will not work on parting the silver from the 6kt alloy resulting from inquarting gold. Heated 35% Nitric acid will work to remove the silver first.

After the silver is removed, then you can process the resulting honeycombed gold with HCl-Cl.

Steve


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## glondor (Jan 29, 2011)

I will wait on the parting then until i have proper facilities. Thanks LS.


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## glondor (Feb 1, 2011)

What is a good vessel to incinerate in? I have a lot of foils from fingers and they are full of gunk and I would like to burn the crap out of them before I do the HCL washes but I am not sure how. Right now they are in pyrex coffee pot, with several inches of rinse water on them. All i have available right now would be a propane torch, a oxy/mapp torch or an electric barbeque, the side burner on my gas bbq is on the fritz and I would not want to use the cooking area inside the bbq anyhow. I know I cannot use the torch in the coffee pot, and the plastic handle on the coffee pot will not go well with the electric bbq. How about a small metal loaf pan on the bbq, will the gold solder to it? I don't want to loose any. Any ideas appreciated.


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## samuel-a (Feb 1, 2011)

Plain old Stainless steel tray or bowl will be good for that.

Safest way is to heat the steel from the bottom with propane torch until red hot, keep at it until all organic material is carbonized .
other way is to blow the torch straight at the foils quickly until they are red glowing and then remove flame.

If you will not melt anything, the is no worry it will adhere to the SS.


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## lazersteve (Feb 1, 2011)

glondor said:


> What is a good vessel to incinerate in? I have a lot of foils from fingers and they are full of gunk and I would like to burn the crap out of them before I do the HCL washes but I am not sure how. Right now they are in pyrex coffee pot, with several inches of rinse water on them. All i have available right now would be a propane torch, a oxy/mapp torch or an electric barbeque, the side burner on my gas bbq is on the fritz and I would not want to use the cooking area inside the bbq anyhow. I know I cannot use the torch in the coffee pot, and the plastic handle on the coffee pot will not go well with the electric bbq. How about a small metal loaf pan on the bbq, will the gold solder to it? I don't want to loose any. Any ideas appreciated.



You may find it's better to do the HCl washes first to remove the copper chlorides that are often found in the recovered foils. 

You can process the foils directly in HCl-Cl after the HCl washes to remove any debris. Some of the circuit board debris and solder mask material (green flakes) produce hazardous vapors when heated. It's easy enough to filter it out after dissolving the foils.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 1, 2011)

Ok Thanks for the great ideas guys. I will go straight for the HCL wash if incineration is not needed. Another question if I may, I have about 3 gallons of beautiful ocean blue rinse water. I suppose it is copper chloride? What would this be good for?


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## lazersteve (Feb 1, 2011)

glondor said:


> Ok Thanks for the great ideas guys. I will go straight for the HCL wash if incineration is not needed. Another question if I may, I have about 3 gallons of beautiful ocean blue rinse water. I suppose it is copper chloride? What would this be good for?



Starting a fresh batch of AP. Add some ~32% HCl and 3% hydrogen peroxide. Or you can simply add it into the original AP reaction bucket once the foils have been harvested.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 1, 2011)

Really looking forward to the first button....


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## glondor (Feb 2, 2011)

Need a little(more) help. My Auric Chloride is orange with a tint to brown. What did I mess up?

My son who has much better colour vision than I do says it is gold/brown with a hint of green...


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## lazersteve (Feb 2, 2011)

Sounds like iron and/or nickel contamination, no worries.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 2, 2011)

10/4 SMB arrives by mail tomorrow by mail, I hope!


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## glorycloud (Feb 4, 2011)

Glondor,

Watching the videos can be helpful with washing of foils, etc.
Steve has done a great job posting that information on his website.
(Make a donation while you're there everyone. 8) )

The blue rinse water needs to have the copper dropped out
of it before you dispose of it. Just add a piece of steel from
a computer case and it will soon be covered in copper.
The rest of the process for safely disposing of rinse waters
and retrieving the copper is found on this fine forum. 8)


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## glondor (Feb 4, 2011)

Thanks Glorycloud. I am happy to say I have 3 of lasersteve's videos and I have watched them all several times. They are an absolute must for beginners and I HIGHLY recommend them. Well produced, very informative and well thought out. If it was not for the videos I would be banging my head against a wall for sure. Excellent job Steve. Thanks. For all you newbies out there like me, buy the videos, it will save you a LOT of work and trial and error. 

I have just added smb to my A/C and I think there must still be a bit of chlorine in it, or it is too cold in my shed. It changed colour like in the video, however it does not seem to be settling. I will leave it until tomorrow and see what happens.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 4, 2011)

It will settle better if you can warm it up.


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## glondor (Feb 6, 2011)

The challenge grows. After careful filtering and 3 acid and 3 water washes (alternating) I have 16-17 grams of brown dried mud. This I will re digest in acid clorox and precipitate again then carry on with the filtering and washes and set aside. This should make my final weight even less.

The expert predictions was for 20+ grams. I expected 23. Seems I have not recovered fully from the A/P treatment. I have already put 1/2 of the A/P mix back to work with some processors so all my results will be skewed from here on.(damn). I got over eager and reused 1/2 the A/P solution before checking with Stannous solution. Live and learn. 

The A/P solution I have left is very dark and I cannot tell if there is a precipitate on the bottom. I will re filter this and see what happens. Proper filtering methods seem to elude me at this point but I am trying. I should explain, I cannot find large coffee filters anywhere! so i have been forced to improvise somewhat. I used a fiberglass plug in a funnel at one point and it seemed to work well, however I do not know how to clean all the gold out of it effectively, I rinsed it well with A/C, but I do not think it is P.M free at this point. 

I may have losses in the filtering (I know I do) which I need to handle I am just not sure of the best way at this point. I had such a volume of very dirty A/P solution I had a tough time with filtration and I am sure there is gold trapped in the gunk in the filters. I will look into this today but any suggestions would be appreciated. 

I will post more as I progress.


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## lazersteve (Feb 6, 2011)

Acid Peroxide Help

You should also read the Copper Chloride Etchant document on my website.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 6, 2011)

Took your advise Steve and read thru the posts again. I am still stumped. I refiltered the A/P I had left over and....nothing. I put a chunk of copper in it this afternoon to see if anything drops, but the A/P is clear and green. I know I am missing something somewhere, Just don't know what. Would it make sense to mix up 1/2 a litre of A/C and pour it thru the (dirty) filters in a funnel a few times? Then maybe rinse with a bit of water.
I still have every scrap and drop of everything I used in the process so I know I have not lost anything yet. I just cannot determine where it is. Yet. I will keep at it as i am sure there is more here than i have. Thanks for the help guys.

I did drop a piece of copper into the spent auric chloride solution this afternoon to see what may happen. It grew a very dark black powder coat within an hour...


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## wrecker45 (Feb 6, 2011)

glondor. i buy my filters at dollerrama...jim


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## glondor (Feb 6, 2011)

Thanks Jim, Barb and I have looked everywhere we could think of for the large filters. I will check dollerama tomorrow. I hope they have some. I did find a good substitute, but they are kind of expensive. The dry pick up filters for a shop vac are about 20 inches across and are quite sturdy. They are blue and the dye does wash out into the solution. There are 3 in a pack for 6 bucks, I will see how many reuses I can get out of 1. I also used the blue Scott shop towels that come in boxes of 100 or on rolls (for rough filtering) Both of these are available at Canadian tire. Fine particulate does get thru so better filters are needed at some point. The fiberglass plug seemed the best but was by far messier to clean up and I think it still holds a lot of my gold. Large coffee filters in a colander does seem to be the best method I have seen. Thanks for the tip! :mrgreen:


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 6, 2011)

Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, there really wasn't as much gold as you expected? It would be difficult to find 2 exact-looking parts that had the same amount of gold on them.


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## Palladium (Feb 6, 2011)

Have you tried a 2 liter coke bottle with a Charmin plug for filtering?


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## nickvc (Feb 7, 2011)

Not to sure how your fibre glass filter would hold up but you could drop it into a small quantity of chlorox to dissolve the gold foils held in it..


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## glondor (Feb 7, 2011)

Thanks for the input guys. I love this place.

@GSP. I certainly considered that I got all there is however I am not comfortable with this at this stage. I am sure you sage old pros can give it a look and a sniff and declare the solution barren of PM's. Or I guess you would use stannous, which I did and discovered there may be still some gold in the spent auric chloride solution. I believe there was still some chlorine in solution when I tried to drop all the gold. and I may have got most of it, (gold) but not all. I am going to add 15 more grams of SMB t to the solution today and see what happens. If nothing does happen I will try cementing anything out, unless I get advise here to do otherwise. 

I may have got too smart for my own good, as I took your method of using a wick to siphon (which is a fantastic idea) and tried to improve on it with little success. When reading your account of how you do it I was reminded of the oil lamps we light in our back yard in the summer. Basically just a can with a lid and a 1/2 inch thick fiberglass wick thru the lid. I thought a wick like this would be better so I found a 3/4 diam fiberglass door gasket for a wood stove door. After working with it for several days I determined it was not working well for some reason and put it aside. 

After I posted last, last night I went to the shed and gave the wick a few squirts of water. It is LOADED with black powder. As the wick was black to begin with, I did not see the amount of material retained by the wick when I put it aside. I suspect something good is in the wick. I wish I had a spot plate to do some little tests in.I do need to make a trip to Efton Science, I will get one when I go. I will test this powder today and see what i have.
I have made some errors and I am aware of it, but the process is forgiving enough to allow recovery from mistakes thankfully. Thanks GSP for your help. 

@ Palladium. No I have not tried the 2 liter bottle yet but i like the idea greatly. Tell me.....Does it have to be Charmin? lol or will any brand do...

@Nickvc... I will try something with the filters and fiberglass rope today. Are you saying just straight bleach will do the job? No HCL needed? 
I don't know whether I will give them a soak or try to leach them somehow.

Thanks guys for your help.


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## nickvc (Feb 7, 2011)

Chlorox is Hcl and bleach as you used in your dissolution, I wouldn't get it too hot and I think it should dissolve any small foils out of your filter.


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## glondor (Feb 7, 2011)

Gotcha Nickvc. Thanks for clarifying for me. Clorox is a name brand of bleach here in North America. HCL/and bleach it is....


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## Palladium (Feb 7, 2011)

If you don’t have a spot plate use a cheap white plastic disposable spoon.
You can use any toilet paper. Pack the paper lightly to get a good sound fit and then wet it with a spray bottle and the paper will swell giving you a nice fit. Pack the paper to tight and it won't hurt anything. It just takes longer to filter is all. I've had some take all day, but it does a great job on the cheap.


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## glondor (Feb 7, 2011)

Thanks Palladium. I will use this tomorrow as I have a coffee pot full of stuff to filter. What method do you use on the plug once the filtering is done? Dry it and incinerate?


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## Palladium (Feb 7, 2011)

I take a spray bottle and flip the 2 liter upside down. Then i spray the plug with a straight stream of water hard, not mist. When you do this you will blow the top layer of the toilet paper off the plug rinsing your trapped gold and some toilet paper pulp into your vessel. Take the plug out and set it up on a shelve to dry for later processing with other filters as it will contain some gold residue. To this water rinse add you hcl and Clorox to dissolve the gold. Then filter to remove the left over toilet tissue and drop with smb.


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## glondor (Feb 8, 2011)

OK so i filtered and washed the black powder form my gold cell. Washed with hcl and water several times. Dissolved powder in HCL/Bleach. Set on low heat overnight to drive off chlorine. Seemed to be good this morning so I mixed up some SMB and added. Got a good amount of precipitate but also a strong chlorine smell. The liquid turned grey as the gold formed and fell however the liquid turned back to yellow gold. The precipitate is in a nice pile in the bottom of the coffee pot, the fluid is golden yellow and additions of SMB just fizz a bit and disappear. I have continued to heat slowly all day, If it is chlorine I cannot seem to drive it off. 

Would it help if I brought the A/C to a boil? 

Stannous test is negative gold, but I understand chlorine negates the test.

My conclusion is there is still chlorine in the mix, Gentle heating is not working. I may be wrong.

Can all the gold drop and the juice still be yellow?


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 8, 2011)

Sincee you still had a chlorine smell either leave it in the sun or _*slowly*_ evaporate the solution down. If you need to add water add distilled water. You might also need to add some HCL.


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## glondor (Feb 8, 2011)

Thanks Barren. There is not much sun here at this time of year so I will continue the slow heat and wait it out. Is it the heat of the sun that kills the chlorine or is it the UV light. I can get UV light.....


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 8, 2011)

If I remember right it is the UV rays. That is the same reason that stabelizer in used in pools is because the sun kills the chlorine.


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## glondor (Feb 8, 2011)

10-4 Good to know.... I know I am using too much bleach. If it keeps fizzing I keep adding,,, It is not easy to get rid of at minus 10 degrees and windy and cloudy and snowing.... Come on Summer...


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## lazersteve (Feb 8, 2011)

glondor said:


> 10-4 Good to know.... I know I am using too much bleach. If it keeps fizzing I keep adding,,, It is not easy to get rid of at minus 10 degrees and windy and cloudy and snowing.... Come on Summer...



That's what you are doing wrong.

If it's fizzing the chlorine is dissolving gold. No need to add more chlorine at that point, just lots of stirring. When all of the fizzing stops and continued stirring does not dissolve any more gold, then add another small dose of Clorox. The key to dissolving gold with HCl-Cl is the stirring to get the gold in contact with the chlorine in the solution.

If you are smelling chlorine gas while dissolving the gold, then it's not dissolved in the solution doing work for you, it's floating around in the air choking you.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 8, 2011)

Thanks guys. After the trouble I had today and with the reiteration of following proper procedure I will certainly stir more and add less. It is absolutely my intent to get this right. I will do better.

I did get the chlorine out by 8 oclock this evening. I will leave any further treatment until tomorrow. I will re asses and try again. Not sure how to proceed from here tho...


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 8, 2011)

If you have any doubts about getting the chlorine out double your volume with distilled water and then slowly evaporate off till it is down to your current volume. Just have some patience.


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## Oz (Feb 8, 2011)

The problem is one of chlorine solubility, not time or dilution. Increasing the volume will not remove chlorine gas but just dilute it, and slow low heat will not get rid of it all. You need to take your solution in an open beaker and heat it up until it just starts to boil, then hold it just under boiling for 10 minutes. 

Chlorine gas is highly soluble in water (your HCl is roughly 70% water or more) when cold. However chlorine gas is virtually non-soluble at 100C. Here is a solubility graph.


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## glondor (Feb 8, 2011)

Thanks for the chart OZ.That is huge info. That is what i did. brought the solution to the edge of a boil for about an hour, and the chlorine was gone. 

So, do i just add a little SMB ? Barren realms007 advised i may need to add a little HCL...


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## Oz (Feb 8, 2011)

I have not followed what you have done here thoroughly, but if you have a gold solution in HCl after removing your chlorine, adding a little extra HCl will do no harm. And since you have mentioned huge amounts of SMB added, it is possible your solution is saturated with sodium from it. If that is the case, adding a little HCl will allow you to use more SMB and have it still go into solution.

This is all assuming you have been adding your SMB as a dry powder.


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## glondor (Feb 9, 2011)

Smb was mixed with water and added...approx 80 grams.


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## stihl88 (Feb 9, 2011)

Unless your expecting 80g of Gold then that's too much SMB. 
You should add just a little more of SMB in weight to what you are excepting in gold.
For example, if you are expecting 2g of Gold then you would precipitate with perhaps 2.5g of raw SMB dissolved in water and this should be enough to precipitate all the Gold.

The more SMB you add the more gunk you will have mixed in your precipitated Gold, you must do as has been explained above, that is of course you have evaporated the chlorine.


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## glondor (Feb 10, 2011)

Ok now I am doing the second drop from our work so far. Just so I don"t over do it on the bleach again, is there a general volume of HCL and Bleach per gram of gold? I have about 18-19 grams of Precipitate to re-refine.

Curious result when I dried the gold precipitate. Altho I shook the h3ll out of it, it would not "powder up" and remained as a slurry until it dried, as a solid like a plop of mud from a creek.(or something that comes out of the back end of babies... uh nevermind)
I gather this means it is still not clean.Correct?

Found what I was after here>>>>>>>> http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=5919&p=51162#p51162


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 10, 2011)

glondor said:


> Ok now I am doing the second drop from our work so far. Just so I don"t over do it on the bleach again, is there a general volume of HCL and Bleach per gram of gold? I have about 18-19 grams of Precipitate to re-refine.
> 
> Curious result when I dried the gold precipitate. Altho I shook the h3ll out of it, it would not "powder up" and remained as a slurry until it dried, as a solid like a plop of mud from a creek.(or something that comes out of the back end of babies... uh nevermind)
> I gather this means it is still not clean.Correct?



Yep that is an indication that it is very dirty. I have had clean gold that no matter how much I stir it in the solution it will not declump and just stays on the bottom of the container.


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

OK now I am totally stumped. I had a beaker with dirty mud
I washed it and attempted a very slow and easy re-digest with HCL/bleach. It was difficult to dissolve totally. The liquid would separate into bright yellow on top with dirty grey on the bottom. With small additions of bleach it dissolved totally over several hours.

When totally dissolved the solution once again looked like yummy orange crush.







I heated the solution to a slow boil for a half an hour, let it cool a bit and added 20 grams of SMB and left it to do its thing over night.I went out this morning to decant and wash the powder but I have a problem.

Now the solution is yellow. There is a grey precipitate on the bottom of the pot and floating gold on the top.











The stannous test on the filter paper is almost black.

Any idea what happened?


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

Ok so I had to try something.......
I shot all the floating gold down with a fine spray from a spray bottle.
I decanted the bright yellow liquid carefully leaving all the grey solids behind. 

I added 5 grams of SMB to the decanted liquid and stirred well. It turned from yellow to chocolate brown then to orange with a skim of gold floating on the top again. There is now (2 hours later) a huge (by volume) precipitate, over 1/2 inch thick covering the entire bottom of the coffee pot, Much more material(by volume) than I started with to begin with. (started this with 18 grams of dirty gold mud). This is not including the precipitate still in the first pot, which by eye looks about the same as the amount I started with.( if the precipitate is gold powder there must be a half pound of it...lol) 

Attempted to dissolve the mud back in the first pot (the one I decanted the nice yellow liquid from (treated above))

Added a little hcl and bleach to the grey mud. 2 hours later i have a bit of grey scum floating on a bed of golden crystals and golden powder. It did not dissolve, Rather it turned from grey mud to golden sand... 
I like the fact I keep seeing gold but nothing I expect to happen seems to be happening...

I have read everything I can find here on precipitation from br007, Steve, Harold, Mic, Palladium, Oz and any thing else i could find. I have Lasersteves print on dropping gold, Harolds print on dropping gold,Phils print on the same. I have Hoke( I printed it off weeks ago, Big book, lol)

I seem to have a fountain of gold here as the more I fool with it the more seems to manifest itself.....

Any one have any idea what is going on??? (besides me making mistakes I mean...)


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 11, 2011)

Sounds like you still have some clorox in your 1st container. Just because it is gold colored after you precipitate does not mean there is gold. Test with stannous. Also what looks like a lot ofgold while in the liquid that settles will be a completely different story when you remove the fluid and dry it out.


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

Hey Barren, Thanks for the reply. The stannous test(this morning) after the drop (last night) was so purple it was almost black.

I did low boil the fluid last night for at least a half an hour, and was very conservative with the bleach additions to begin with, before i tried to drop it. 

What do I do now...


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 11, 2011)

Add about 1/3 distilled water and evaporate the solution down. Then after that is done put your container in an ice bath and then mix up some SMB in some ice water and add it to your solution and see if your gold will drop. It might help after you add your SMB to put it on low heat to get your gold to settle. Then siphone off your solution and test with stannous. If it still shows positive add a little more SMB if nothing drops then you might need to add some copper to get the rest to drop and reprocess it.


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

10/4


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## eeTHr (Feb 11, 2011)

When you read all those instructions for precipitating, you skipped over the part where you add water after boiling it down.

I tried that once, and nothing happened after adding the SMB. Then I added a little water and it instantly turned chocolate brown, then the powder settled after that.


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## lazersteve (Feb 11, 2011)

I didn't see any mention of filtering the solution.

When I use HCl-Cl to dissolve black powder from the cell I *always* end up with a portion of light gray mud that has to be filtered out before I add SMB. Another thing about the HCl-Cl reaction is that you will get a lot of white sediment when you add ice or dilute the solution, this must also be filtered out before adding SMB. 

*As a rule:* *Never add SMB unless the solution is 100% transparent and free of all cloudiness and sediment.*

The fact that you are seeing gray means you have some other metals in the mix, maybe iron judging from the color of your solution.

Please post a photo of your swab with a *diluted* test sample. Remember false positives can look like gold is present, especially after SMB has been added.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

OK guys, thanks for all your help. I got the desired results. Not melted yet, just too tired. Will button up tomorrow. What do you think...


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## Palladium (Feb 11, 2011)

Make sure you do your washes now that it's in a finely divided state to remove any carry over metals before you melt it.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 11, 2011)

Very nice looking, congrat's.


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

Thanks Palladium. I got this far using the method from Harold's tutorial on gold refining. 3 water washes boiling, alternating with 3 boiling hcl washes and a boiling rinse with water was required to make the wash solutions clear. I did mess up a bit as I boiled the final rinse out instead of pouring it off by mistake. Did I miss something ? I did not roast as I could not find a stainless steel pan to roast in,however I planned on doing a real slow roast in the melting dish before melting tomorrow. However, if the material appears not ready for a melt I will certainly wash some more. 
What washes would you recommend from here as a procedure. I will follow.


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## glondor (Feb 11, 2011)

Thanks BR007. Your input kept me going....


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## Palladium (Feb 11, 2011)

Did you test your rinse waters?


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## lazersteve (Feb 12, 2011)

It looks very good for the first go around.

You should dissolve it a second time, filter the solution, and precipitate with a second reducing agent like oxalic acid for the highest purity if you really want to get close to 4-9's. 

You'll notice a vast difference in the way the clean gold precipitates and settles as opposed to gold from the first go around. 

If you melt it now before dissolving again, you will have a tougher job ahead of you to get it back into solution if you decide to refine it again later.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 12, 2011)

@ palladium. Yup i did test. negative for gold however i did hang a piece of copper in the rinse bucket for good luck.

@ Lasersteve, is there a common source for oxalic acid? or is it a lab supply purchase only...


Found a source. From a woosworking site...


I suggest you inquire at Home Depot. I picked up some a while back, in the aisle around the wood stains. It is in a 12 oz. white tub, labelled "Bondex" then below "Wood Bleach (Oxalic Acid Crystals)".

Failing that, you could call Bondex International (Canada) to find a local retailer.


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## lazersteve (Feb 12, 2011)

glondor said:


> @ Lazersteve, is there a common source for oxalic acid? or is it a lab supply purchase only...



Over the counter wood bleach, be sure to check the MSDS for high purity oxalic acid content.

Oxalic Acid - Wood Bleach

I bought mine from skylighter.com .

Be sure to read the MSDS before using oxalic acid or it's salts.

Steve

Steve


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## shyknee (Feb 12, 2011)

glondor said:


> @ palladium. Yup i did test. negative for gold however i did hang a piece of copper in the rinse bucket for good luck.
> 
> @ Lasersteve, is there a common source for oxalic acid? or is it a lab supply purchase only...
> 
> ...


picked some up at The Bass Pro Shop on the 400hwy or you can order from eston science


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## shyknee (Feb 12, 2011)

I just realized we don't sleep much :lol:


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## nickvc (Feb 12, 2011)

Looking good but do try and resist making your first button and refine it again to get really high purity. I'd say you will be around 995 at the moment so take another day and get 999+ especially if your going to keep it 8)


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## Anonymous (Feb 12, 2011)

shyknee said:


> I just realized we don't sleep much


Sleep?!?! What?!?! You actually get to sleep? Ok who the heck said shyknee can sleep? 

Hey mike,sorry we've all been really sick.Everything looks good.You are doing great,Looks like everyone has you covered well,but you can still call me if you need to,Im feeling a lot better now.


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## glondor (Feb 12, 2011)

Hey Shyknee, I looked at bass pro shops online catalog and did not see oxalic acid. Where would I find it at Bass? Is it sold as a cleaner or what? I don't know what to look for there.


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## glondor (Feb 13, 2011)

Ok. I did not redissolve the powder as I could not find oxalic acid anywhere. I did rewash with ammonia and then water. 

I did crack my melting dish although I tried to go slow with the warm up, as it remained in 1 piece i used it .
Here is the cracked dish...









My first button 17.28 grams.








I want to thank every one who put time and effort into helping me get this far. Thank you all very much.

My next project......


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## Anonymous (Feb 13, 2011)

Congrats Mike!Very nice button.Im proud of you.That purple in your flux is just colloidal gold that didn't aglomate with the rest of the gold,but an insignificant amount.Considering the flux did not melt on top of your button and there is no apparent oxidation on top,I would say it is around 98-99%.Of course without an assay it's difficult to say,but just my guess from my experience.Whats the weight on the pins in the bottom picture?
Good job bud,
J


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## glondor (Feb 13, 2011)

Thanks Mic. It looked better than it does now. As I was finishing up the melt, i thought I would sprinkle a bit of borax on top. I had it handy in a spoon. Picked it up and gave the spoon a tap and saw a black bit of something that looked like coffee ground land right on the button with the borax. I dunno what it was, maybe something fell off my coat into the borax spoon while I was working.

I could see a dark stain spread across the button and now it looks like crap.

I still really really like it tho.....

There are 5 pounds of pins and ceramic caps from the fiber processors. They are the same ones in the pictures on page 1 of this thread. They are in hot HCL right now. Curious thing, They were sitting in HCL for a month or so and I gave them a rinse. Although the hcl was black as coal, the rinse water was almost as white as milk. I rinsed them real well and now have a gallon of slightly grey/bluish white milk. There is indication there will be a lot of solids in the rinse water. Wonder what it could be?? I may have time tomorrow to poke at it and see what it is. Cheers!

I will probably inquart the button in the spring along with 6 ounces of karat scrap i have. Does that make sense. Have to think about it...


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## lazersteve (Feb 14, 2011)

Glondor,

Most of the time when you see a bluish-gray powder that forms as a white cloud it's likely copper I chloride. It forms when water is added to an acidic saturated solution of copper. 

The powder may contain hidden values in the form of gold flakes or fine black powder. Dissolve it in straight 32% HCl and see what is left behind.

Steve


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## glondor (Feb 14, 2011)

OK Steve I Will look at it tonight. I just thought I would post these pictures of the liquid. It has settled over night and most of today. It looks very interesting as it has developed a stratigraphy involving 7 if not 8 layers. I will try to siphon each layer separately for curiosity sake. Check it out!






I am not sure it the lower layers are liquids or solids


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## glondor (Feb 17, 2011)

OK guys I have 2 solutions I am working on right now and one of them is driving me crazy. 

I finally got around to washing the fiber chips thoroughly last night. Filtered the powder and started a wash procedure. Gave the powder a good boil with water first and moved on to HCL.

Added 3 times the powder volume of HCL and heated. The boiling solution has separated into 3 parts. The top layer is silvery grey metallic looking and is sticky.

The center layer is yellowish liquid with all the light trash boiling around in it. The bottom layer is a dark precipitate. 

I know the yellow liquid goes after testing, But what is the silver slime on top and how do I deal with it? I cannot decant around it and it is too thick and sticky to siphon off.

Could it be lead?


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## glondor (Feb 18, 2011)

Sorry, I figured out what I missed.


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