# 11.5 ounces of fuzz button connectors



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 12, 2017)

Earlier today I received my usps package in the mail with the fuzz button connectors from the big servers. I immediately opened the bag and dumped it into a large corningware quiche dish (to catch stray fuzzies that popped out). All in all there were 86. 
4 large "quad buttons" -cinch t 0650 sss 242229 -56.79g
2 cinch 0543 -10.70g
2 cinch 0234 - 10.61g
1 cinch 0235 - 7.29g
10 unknown # similar to 0543 -45.60g
42 unknown model# (small square in center w no fuzzies)-118.44g
25 cinch 0326 (similar to unknown above, but 2 small rows in the center where there were none in the above unknown) - 72.38g
86 total for 321.81g


I wasnt quite sure how to pragmatically go about this in a beneficial manner for the forum. But, I am going to dry the now leeched connectors and weigh them again. And report the difference between the weights, then the yield of gold. 


After they ran to completion the solution was a very deep orange/red.






Sulfamic addition gave little effervescence after stirring.

It wont let me add anymore pictures to this post, so i will continue on in the next post.

So far I have collected the gold after precipitation, but the solution still had a reddish tint to it. Stannous yielded a brown result, indicating I either overdosed or there is a little platinum in solution.

I will add pictures of the mud, solution that im cementing on copper and the stannous result after ppt. I am obviously still working on this. Trying to be as fastidious as possible, but, Im not used to documenting and presenting everything. Also being sick as a dog for 3 days reslly hasnt helped.

Any input is greatly appreciated.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 12, 2017)

This is the solution color still, after precipitating the gold out.



Control, copperas crystal, stannous test



Gold powder, dirty, gold powder



Connectors after rinsing and adding rinse water to mother liquor (before ppt, this picture should have been before the other 2)


----------



## Tndavid (Jan 12, 2017)

Looking good!


----------



## silversaddle1 (Jan 12, 2017)

Looking good!


----------



## mls26cwru (Jan 12, 2017)

just as a heads up, be careful about getting the solution too dilute... you will find a deep blue color change that happens if you do. Do a number of extra HCl washes of your gold before rinsing with water.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 12, 2017)

mls26cwru said:


> just as a heads up, be careful about getting the solution too dilute... you will find a deep blue color change that happens if you do. Do a number of extra HCl washes of your gold before rinsing with water.



I generally do the first rinse with HCl, until little to no color change, then I procede with water.

This is just the first refine posted up, I am working on it still and will continue to add updates and pictures until I have the total yield melted.

I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
(sorry, I've been around my kiddos and their cousins far too much recently..)

Thanks gentlemen. 8)


----------



## FrugalRefiner (Jan 12, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
> (sorry, I've been around my kiddos and their cousins far too much recently..)


There is no such thing as being around them too much right now. Believe it or not, tomorrow (or, at least it will seem that way), they'll be getting their driver's licenses and they won't want to spend much time around you. Treasure every moment while you can, even if you can't stand to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants one more time.  

Dave


----------



## Lou (Jan 12, 2017)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > I am hoping to have that accomplished by tomorrow evening before Elsa entraps all of my land in her ice spell.
> ...



True story.

The orange color is not platinum--it is molybdenum.

The blue, likewise, is called molybdenum blue.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 13, 2017)

Excellent! Thank you Lou... I was a bit worried smb wasn't dropping all of the gold for some reason (even though I denoxxed with sulfamic, and waited overnight for it to react [both the sulfamic, then the smb]) 

Good to know that there wasn't something funny going on with my choice precipitant.

And Dave, I feel their independence coming in leaps and bounds already, where sometimes they would just rather watch their tablets than hang with boring old dad. But, I think my saving grace will be refining...whenever I am sorting scrap, weighing it up, and writing it all down. They always have to be right there asking me questions the whole way...about what it is, what I'm going to do with it, why, etc... So, I can only hope that their interest grows as they do. But, I guess only time will tell! They have a good long while before they can follow me to the workshop and see what's going on out there though. 

Hopefully I can keep their interest until then


----------



## upcyclist (Jan 13, 2017)

Kids love sorting and counting--use that cheap labor! :wink: 

I have pictures of my daughter, at about age 5, helping me when I was hand-cutting silver chainmaille rings. As they fell off the saw blade, she would pick them up with some long tweezers and put them in her nesting cups. She's now 11, and won't let me kiss her in public lol.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 17, 2017)

After all was said and done the conmectors weighed a grand total of 278.93 grams.

Start total was 321.82
Giving a difference of 42.88 grams.

After rerefining the powder and melting, there was 8.2 grams of gold.

42.88÷8.2= 19%gold alloy in the buttons
8.2 ÷ 321.82 =2.54% total weight gold %
So, 19% of the metal fuzzies was gold, the remainder is molybdenum and whatever else. I still feel like there should have been a bit more gold. But, decanting the stock pot after a few days of aerated copper saturation, there was nome to speak of. So, I suppose that is it. 

I guess the yield could have been (would have been) much closer to the 8% that was posed in another thread, if the connectors were all the solid type ones. But 45 of these processed were open centered. Regardless, here are more pics of the process.


Second precipitation during the wash stage



Stock pot after cementing a few days



Dried powder, getting ready to melt. Used a brand new melt dish for this event.



The melted gold. I had initially poured shotz to divy up the toll but, the total sum has been sent back to the party. I didn't remelt, why? I don't know honestly... Just didn't.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 17, 2017)

The backside of the button.

The button has a bit of a fern pattern to it, which some other threads say is an indicatiom of platinum group contamination... The xrf reading I had my jeweler shoot today showed no traces of pgm's though....but, thats an xrf gun..take it for what its worth..



One of the button before I cleaned off the borax.



Another one showing the pipe and some fern patterning


----------



## Tndavid (Jan 17, 2017)

Nice button and info on the process! Thanks for sharing...


----------



## Barren Realms 007 (Jan 17, 2017)

Good job Topher_osAUrus. Do you have any flux in that dish?


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 17, 2017)

Yes, just a very tiny amount of borax that I used to "wet" the dish. But I did not add any more during the melt. The dish at the tip actually looked a bit dirty when it was just the borax in it, which I attributed to the cold reducing flame of the mapp torch. When I had the gold beginning to melt, and turned up the heat - getting to a nice blue flame- the black disappeared, and I know it didnt go in the gold, as it was nowhere near the spout of the dish. So, I think it was just some carbon that was trapped in the borax glass initially.


----------



## Platdigger (Jan 17, 2017)

Actually mls26cwru had very similar results. This is a quote from a post he made back in June of last Year: 

"the gold fuzz yields from my runs were similar.... i got an average of 2.7wt% Au vs. holder weight, and 18.0wt% Au vs. fuzz wire weight."

This is a link to that thread: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=16018&hilit=fuzz+buttons


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 18, 2017)

Thanks platdigger.

I hadn't seen that thread on them.. That gives me peace of mind on my numbers... Now I can stop wondering "where" the rest could be, and "why" its not in the stock pot.


----------



## silversaddle1 (Jan 18, 2017)

I am very happy with the job this man has done for me on these fuzzy things. I am going to send him some more goodies today!


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 18, 2017)

Thank you kindly, that truly means a lot.

I will continue on, and strive for excellence on your material.
8) :G 8)


----------



## aga (Jan 18, 2017)

Ooooh ! Me wants a Precious like that !

Beatutiful result Topher.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 18, 2017)

aga said:


> Ooooh ! Me wants a Precious like that !
> 
> Beatutiful result Topher.



Thank you aga. I will be showing off more beautiful buttons as I get the next toll refine done.

I look forward to you showing off your first button, as I'm sure it will be spectacular. :G 8)


----------



## aga (Jan 18, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> I look forward to you showing off your first button, as I'm sure it will be spectacular. :G 8)


It'll probably be more like a 'speck' than a 'tacular' !

One of the great things about this forum is how easy it is to see who is an Actual refiner, and who is just here to pose pointless questions that will never be put to any real use.

Anyone refining, especially for the first time, is naturally eager to show off their work/results.

The really experienced refiners don't so much, probably because they've seen much bigger and better 
However, their answers to specific questions shows how much they have worked in refining, as they suggest Practical working solutions to problems, not just googled stuff.

This really is a great strength of this forum, and it helps keep it at such a High Quality.

The types of parasites that infest other forums can't live here for long - the Mods & Members 'refine' them out and discard them !


----------



## anachronism (Jan 18, 2017)

we obviously ain't trying hard enough in your case Aga.   

Jon

Edited to remove cuss word from post.
We do not need to curse to make a point.
Butcher


----------



## Tndavid (Jan 18, 2017)

Very true statement Aga!!!


----------



## snoman701 (Feb 1, 2017)

upcyclist said:


> Kids love sorting and counting--use that cheap labor! :wink:
> 
> I have pictures of my daughter, at about age 5, helping me when I was hand-cutting silver chainmaille rings. As they fell off the saw blade, she would pick them up with some long tweezers and put them in her nesting cups. She's now 11, and won't let me kiss her in public lol.



May sound goofy, but I've been thinking about getting back in to chainmaille jewelry...have any pics of your work?


----------



## upcyclist (Feb 7, 2017)

I won't mess up the thread with pics, but at least one of my old JPL pieces is at my Etsy storefront (which I don't really maintain anymore).


----------



## g_axelsson (Feb 12, 2017)

Lou said:


> The blue, likewise, is called molybdenum blue.


I did some aqua regia on 486 CPU:s recently and I ran into a deep blue almost waxy deposit on my beaker when I switched acids. It was hard to catch it on a picture, but here is my best shot.


Is this the "molybdenum blue" you mention? Googling it I found some articles about poly metallic compounds with heavy rings of molybdenum in various oxidation states. Specifically it mentioned Mo(VI) partly reduced into Mo(V) and a lot of oxygen. The molecules consisted of around 800 atoms creating Mo154-clusters and was made using nitrosyl (a chemical that exists in aqua regia). Is this what I accidentally created or does it have a more mundane explanation?
The reduction of molybdenum could have been from exposed metals when the AR level was dropping, most of the gold had already cemented back on remaining base metal.

I don't remember if I dissolved it in HCl or aqua regia, but it's gone now. I'm just curious of what I happened to see.

Göran


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Feb 13, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> [ Googling it I found some articles about poly metallic compounds with heavy rings of molybdenum in various oxidation states. Specifically it mentioned Mo(VI) partly reduced into Mo(V) and a lot of oxygen. The molecules consisted of around 800 atoms creating Mo154-clusters and was made using nitrosyl (a chemical that exists in aqua regia). Is this what I accidentally created or does it have a more mundane explanation?
> The reduction of molybdenum could have been from exposed metals when the AR level was dropping, most of the gold had already cemented back on remaining base metal.
> 
> I don't remember if I dissolved it in HCl or aqua regia, but it's gone now. I'm just curious of what I happened to see.
> ...



Göran, I don't know if this will help you, but
-
"Reduction of molybdate in acidic solution leads to formation of so-called molybdenum blues. The precise nature of these blue compounds is not known, but it generally is accepted that it is some mixed oxidation state compound (molybdenum in +6 oxidation state and +5 oxidation state in a single complicated ion or molecule). The blue material can be in solution, but it can also be colloidal."

An excerpt from this website-
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/colorfulmolybdenum/index.html

Which, coincidentally (not really), was a website that Lou posted on another thread, although I believe it was the experiments on Ru oxidation states.


----------



## g_axelsson (Feb 13, 2017)

Thanks Topher, I had forgotten about that site and it didn't appear among the first hits when I googled "molybden blue". It is a wonderful site and I spent some time just browsing through the pages when Lou first posted that link.

I should have posted the wikipedia link I found, I thought I did but apparently I didn't...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdenum_blue

This is also an interesting site, showing how molybdenum can form huge clusters.
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/polyoxomolybdate.html

Göran


----------



## Lou (Feb 13, 2017)

Tungsten also does it.


----------

