# gold powder



## glondor (Jan 16, 2011)

Does the weight of gold powder from a drop equal the weight of the button produced? All things being equal and the gold is not blown out of the melting dish? Will 10 grams of gold powder make a 10 gram button? Assume nice clean gold powder.


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## lazersteve (Jan 16, 2011)

Depends how well you rinse the salts from the powder in the clean up stage, how well you dry the powder, and if you have any other volatile trash in with the gold. In a perfect world yes, in reality, seldom ever are the two figures exact.

A tiny BB stuck to the lip of the dish, your mold, or in the borax is enough to change the mass of the button.

Steve


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## glondor (Jan 16, 2011)

OK thanks Steve, that explains it.


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## Harold_V (Jan 17, 2011)

There's also a miniscule loss when melting. Likely goes unnoticed, but, when you're melting, ever notice a tiny flash leaving the dish? I got that, even with my double refined gold, which was quite pure. 

I generally melted no less than 70 ounces at one time, and often more. I used a melting pan to catch anything that might spill should a dish fracture, or I get clumsy and tip one over. When I had finished melting, there was always a small collection of miniscule gold spheres in the pan, which I expect came from those tiny flashes that left the dish occasionally. The loss was always small, but it was routine. 

If you don't make a habit of force drying your gold, you should. Once water leaves, you'd be amazed at the smells that come from the superheated gold. You often can see a stream of something leaving---well past the temperature of boiling water---so you're expelling something that would be weighed and assumed to be gold. Safest way to determine a yield is to melt, assuming you aren't planning on re-refining. 

Harold


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## glondor (Jan 17, 2011)

70 OZ ! Did you use a furnace or a really big torch? Thats a lot of gold.


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## Anonymous (Jan 17, 2011)

As with almost everyone,when I get in a rush and do not wash my powder,I get excess copper and other base metals in my powder when I melt.Well I've noticed through the years that the contaminants,unlike the gold,get white hot before thay melt,and they tend to "pop".I don't recall having that problem when I melt washed powder.Obviously I make sure my powder is clean.


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## goldenchild (Jan 17, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> If you don't make a habit of force drying your gold, you should. Once water leaves, you'd be amazed at the smells that come from the superheated gold. You often can see a stream of something leaving---well past the temperature of boiling water---so you're expelling something that would be weighed and assumed to be gold. Safest way to determine a yield is to melt, assuming you aren't planning on re-refining.Harold



Very true. I torch dry my gold after both refinings and am able to get very accurate weights. I do this to see what the difference in contaminants is between the first refining and the second. Also, doing this helps get the gold in a more solid state "clumps" making melting much easier. 

Lately I've been processing material with straight AR. My filtering techniques have gotten so refined(pun intended) that there is not much of a difference in weight between the first and second refinings. Less than .5 grams if that. Good filtration is key.


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