# My first gold



## kaits31 (Feb 27, 2012)

My first nuggets of gold recovered with sulfuric cell.  I will soon remelt and purify.






Has anybody recovered gold from these and how much there is?


----------



## Geo (Feb 27, 2012)

those are high grade pins. 453.5g pins should yield around 0.4g gold.


----------



## dtectr (Feb 27, 2012)

The black edge card connector is a lower grade as only the contact surface is plated. However, the green ones are fully plated, usually, and inserted AFTER plating and are truly high grade. Avoid the use of nitric as the pins are phosphor bronze which contains tin and thus yields metastannic acid. Yuck


----------



## martyn111 (Feb 27, 2012)

kaits31 said:


> My first nuggets of gold recovered with sulfuric cell.  I will soon remelt and purify.



The question 'why did you melt the finely divided gold into nuggets before refining them?' has to asked.

When you recovered the powders from the sulphuric cell you could easily have dissolved them in Hcl/cl, dropped them with SMB, washed as per Harolds washing technique, redissolved and dropped, rewashed, dried and melted to produce 'nuggets' of better quality or stored the orignal gold powder for refining at a later date when you had accumulated more.

Now you need to dissolve larger pieces of gold, which is going to take longer.

That being said, well done on RECOVERING your first gold, (note I said recovering not refining). Theres no going back now, you will be hooked with this hobby.


----------



## kaits31 (Feb 28, 2012)

My only excuse for not refining after cell is lack of HCl, concentrated nitric and SMB. I was too eager to see the result, so I melted it. :lol: Now I found the shop, where I could pick some chemicals and tools up. 
I have about half a pound of those high grade pins. If Nitric is out of option for them, so is it better to do cell or HCl peroxide method? Many of them have solder which I must get rid of before treatment.


----------



## Geo (Feb 28, 2012)

remove solder with a soak in hcl for a few hours. don't be startled by the appearance of the pins when they come out of the hcl, they will be anywhere between black to copper colored. just rub one after its dry and the gold will show through.


----------



## kaits31 (Mar 3, 2012)

Thanks for advice! I will soon process them and some more scrap.


----------



## nickvc (Mar 3, 2012)

While melting your gold is not the best idea alls not lost, if you use AR to refine your next batches chances are you will overdo the nitric which needs to be removed before your gold will precipitate, so put your powders in the beaker add your HCl and add small increments of nitric until your powders dissolve then add your buttons which will consume any free nitric left, quicker than evaporation and better than using urea and the buttons will also be refined along the way, you may have to do two dissolutions to get really clean gold.


----------



## kaits31 (Mar 11, 2012)

After some refining, looks pretty pure to me.


----------



## rucito (Mar 12, 2012)

kaits31 said:


> My first nuggets of gold recovered with sulfuric cell.  I will soon remelt and purify.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


РПМ23-18ГШ5 жёлтые - Au-0.00471g , Ag-0.2027g


----------



## kaits31 (Apr 29, 2012)

Did some more refining with boiling powder with HCl and lot of water washes.
Picture of powder (looks pretty pure to me) :





And button with a nice pipe formation (a bit over 10 gramms) 8) :


----------



## philddreamer (Apr 29, 2012)

Beautiful!!! 8) 

Phil


----------



## maynman1751 (Apr 29, 2012)

Wowser kaits! That's is a beauty!


----------



## Harold_V (Apr 29, 2012)

The button displays all of the desireable features-----great color, very nice surface (not frosted) and a very acceptable pipe. Well done!

Harold


----------



## kaits31 (Apr 29, 2012)

Thank you all! It is pure joy to learn from you, guys!


----------



## martyn111 (Apr 29, 2012)

After my earlier comments in this thread about melting recovered gold, all I can say now is, well done in taking the advice given by myself and others and producing an excellent button after refining and washing correctly.


----------



## kaits31 (Aug 12, 2012)

I just recently achieved my 1 troy ounce goal. Here is picture of those buttons. I plan to make one bar out of those. 8)


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 12, 2012)

It is nice to see how they add up isn't it?


----------



## joem (Aug 12, 2012)

great job


----------



## samuel-a (Aug 12, 2012)

It's always a pleasure seeing someone posting "out of the blue" with such nice results.
It's a clear sign that some people actually do take the advice to read Hoke, search the forum and basically just learn & understand this trade.

kaits31, well-done and welcom to the forum.


----------



## kaits31 (Aug 12, 2012)

patnor1011 said:


> It is nice to see how they add up isn't it?



Yea, it is. It is like they say, once you get hooked, there is no way back. :lol: 
Now I have to find some new scrap, because I ran out of stuff I had, before I started. :roll:


----------



## jimdoc (Aug 12, 2012)

kaits31 said:


> Now I have to find some new scrap, because I ran out of stuff



I hate when that happens.

Jim


----------



## Palladium (Aug 12, 2012)

samuel-a said:


> It's always a pleasure seeing someone posting "out of the blue" with such nice results.
> It's a clear sign that some people actually do take the advice to read Hoke, search the forum and basically just learn & understand this trade.
> 
> kaits31, well-done and welcome to the forum.



Right on Sam! Those are good looking buttons and i to will say very nice job and keep up the good work.


----------



## kaits31 (Aug 13, 2012)

Thank you all! It is pleasure to learn from this forum! 8)


----------



## sebass (Aug 13, 2012)

Nice gold...and very clean . My first gold button . Not have this golden color. ...I not wash and clean the powder.


----------

