# More pictures for Encouragement



## samuel-a

I like the idea of Rusty's post.
Hope this will inspire someone...


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## Platdigger

OK Sam, now we are talkin!

Thanks for the pics.


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## 9kuuby9

Thank you for sharing sam!

Btw can you respond on my question on youtube?

Kind regards;

Ben


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## Claudie

Impressive!


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## AUH-R

Now you're just showing off :lol: 

How did you dry the powder in a plastic bucket?

Thanks & best wishes,
AuH-R


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## CBentre

Sam you are the man, I might just have to fly you to Canada to do some work for me. Nice!


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## rusty

Looking good Sam


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## griptheweasel

10.45 troy ounces! That's a good chunk of change. What was all that gold recovered from? Thanks for sharing.


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## rusty

siannopollo said:


> 10.45 troy ounces! That's a good chunk of change. What was all that gold recovered from? Thanks for sharing.



Urban Waste.


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## its-all-a-lie

:shock:


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## samuel-a

siannopollo said:


> 10.45 troy ounces! That's a good chunk of change. What was all that gold recovered from? Thanks for sharing.




Decommissioned plating bath.
My gold shot crucible broke so i just let the gold freez in the melting crucible.


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## joem

Oh, thanks SAm. You found my lost gold pancake. LOL
Stunning


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## metatp

Here's my first major (well to me major) gold drop. There is about 37g-38g. The source was some gold pins from lazersteve, some CPUs, misc gold plated/gold filled stuff, and karat jewelry. Each group was refined separately, and a second refining was performed on the groups combined.

Thanks for everybody on this site and for this forum. Things were slow, but went smoothly.

Tom


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## FrugalRefiner

Tom,

That looks awesome!

I'll be watching for the picture of the ingot.

Dave


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## patnor1011

Dinner is served and looks yummy. :lol:


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## Claudie

That is pretty impressive! Well done.


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## Palladium

Very well done !


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## metatp

Thanks all. I will sent a picture of the bar once I cast it. I will hopefully get it done in the next week of so.

Tom


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## lazersteve

Great job Tom.

Here's a gold muffin I made last week:








Steve


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## Claudie

"Are you gonna eat that?"


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## patnor1011

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


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## gold4mike

I was just sitting here trying to decide what he might have for dessert after that meal!


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## Lou

Dense as it is, it's bound to clean the pipes!

Talk about the goose laying the golden egg! :mrgreen:


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## mls26cwru

jeez.... makes the 38 grams i refined over the weekend look like chump change... nice job!


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## Claudie

I wouldn't call 38 grams chunk change :|


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## metatp

38g is fine by me. If I had that big muffin, I would probably drop it.


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## butcher

:lol: :lol: :lol: 
Who says scientist do not have a sense of humor.
my Stomach Ache is hurting from laughing so hard.


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## butcher

Lou said:


> Dense as it is, it's bound to clean the pipes!
> 
> Talk about the goose laying the golden egg! :mrgreen:



:lol: 
Who says scientist do not have a sense of humor, my stomach hurts from laughing so hard.


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## qst42know

Looks like someone had their fingers in the batter. 

That purple looks familiar. :mrgreen:


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## Geo

:lol: looks like my fingers right now. i got in a hurry and squeezed a filter without gloves on. that purple stain wont come off, you have to wear it off.


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## Emporio

Steve, I would love to have the recipe for that muffin! :lol:


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## samuel-a

About 80g shot from another 330g batch...


Sorry about the watermarks... hope you guys understand...


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## glondor

A few little pattys...


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## joem

MIKE! Just slap me with it and I'll be happy


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## Magiskt

Oh please shake my hand :mrgreen: how many grams is that?


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## pattt

Hi all,
Glondor,

You should have worn gloves , than that wouldn't happen !

maybe you can scrape it of , or a good wash of the hands in hcl/cl maybe gets it off :mrgreen: 

I am just jealous, very nice buttons.

Pat


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## samuel-a

Awesome trio Mike!


Here's the rest of the batch, poured this morning:



This gold came from a high end electronics industry...


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## joem

Here comes the cereal puns,
nice


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## Magiskt

Looks like a nice breakfast!


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## butcher

Excellent
Proof that it does pay to study hard, and work hard, and improve your skill and knowledge.
Encouragement for refining ourselves as well as our metals.
Love seeing those pictures, I know the hard work that went into making them, that is something to be very proud of.


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## niteliteone

I've heard of "Golden Corn Flakes" but would those be Karat Flakes :lol:


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## glondor

That is a really nice bowl of cereal!~! Great job!


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## Noxx

Some pictures 8) 












Weight excludes the crucible.


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## samuel-a

Wonderful !!


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## FrugalRefiner

Very Nice!


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## kadriver

lazersteve said:


> Here's a gold muffin I made last week
> 
> Steve



I showed this to my wife and she asked if it was a cake.

I told her that it was, but not the kind you would want to eat.

kadriver


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## alex1402

Nice Job!!!


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## dirkclod

That's awesome ! I get some mud and can't stand it till I hit it with a flame ! I love the smell of mapp in the morning :twisted:


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## patnor1011

Button I did for one friend. It came from BGA IC chips. 41.8g


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## solar_plasma

Is it from the 10kg bga's which has been sold on ebay for about 450€ about 2 month ago? ...would match to the yield. Nice!


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## Smack

Pat, nice pic of your Terrier in the button, don't tell it that the button makes it look fat. lol


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## necromancer

Ohhhhh sparkley....

thats one nice glob !!


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## patnor1011

Haha... I do not have dog, that would be probably some flowers, distorted by angle, I really just guess.

I do not know about that auction, it in fact come as disappointment, it is a part of gold recovered from 14 kilograms of BGA where I expected close to 70g but recovered only 54.3g. That is about 20% less than I expected.
Lot consisted of predominantly two types of IC. I suspect one of them had much smaller yield than what is usually expected. When I crushed material I removed most of Si cores from IC and they were 2 types, bigger and small. I just think that IC with small wafer contained much less bonding wires than the other one.


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## necromancer

now that is funny !!
while Pat was posting the above post i was looking for his dog in the picture  i didnt see the dog :shock:


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## Smack

In the bottom picture on the right side, after you click on the picture to enlarge it, hit ctrl and + key to zoom in. That thing looks just like a dog, maybe a Pomeranian?


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## necromancer

Smack said:


> In the bottom picture on the right side, after you click on the picture to enlarge it, hit ctrl and + key to zoom in. That thing looks just like a dog, maybe a Pomeranian?



its the pink camera with a finger on the button
i thought it was a ipod at first


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## dirkclod

Made a new one just now 17.7 grams but it has a strange color. Bright gold color on bottom but top a little colorful..


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## joubjonn

Pickle it next time you make some AR. It will come out shiny.


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## dirkclod

Have pickle made up but just put in water this time.


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## Geo

dirkclod said:


> Made a new one just now 17.7 grams but it has a strange color. Bright gold color on bottom but top a little colorful..



People pay good money to create that effect. From wiki :

Purple gold (also called amethyst gold and violet gold) is an alloy of gold and aluminium rich in gold-aluminium intermetallic (AuAl2). Gold content in AuAl2 is around 79% and can therefore be referred to as 18 karat gold. Purple gold is more brittle than other gold alloys, as it is an intermetallic compound instead of a malleable alloy, and a sharp blow may cause it to shatter.[7] It is therefore usually machined and faceted to be used as a "gem" in conventional jewelry rather than by itself. At a lower content of gold, the material is composed of the intermetallic and an aluminium-rich solid solution phase. At a higher content of gold, the gold-richer intermetallic AuAl forms; the purple color is preserved to about 15% of aluminium. At 88% of gold the material is composed of AuAl and changes color. (The actual composition of AuAl2 is closer to Al11Au6 as the sublattice is incompletely occupied.)[2]

Blue gold is an alloy of gold and indium.[7] It contains 46% gold (about 12 karat) and 54% indium,[1] forming an intermetallic compound AuIn2. While several sources remark this intermetallic to have "a clear blue color",[2] in fact the effect is slight: AuIn2 has CIE LAB color coordinates of 79, -3.7, -4.2[9] which appears roughly as a greyish color. With gallium, gold forms an intermetallic AuGa2 (58.5% Au, 14ct) which has slighter bluish hue. The melting point of AuIn2 is 541 °C, for AuGa2 it is 492 °C. AuIn2 is less brittle than AuGa2, which itself is less brittle than AuAl2.[10]

All the AuX2 intermetallics have crystal structure of CaF2 and therefore are brittle.[2] Deviation from the stoichiometry results in loss of color. Slightly nonstoichiometric compositions are however used, to achieve a fine-grained two- or three-phase microstructure with reduced brittleness. A small amount of palladium, copper or silver can be added to achieve a less brittle microstructure.[10]

The intermetallic compounds tend to have poor corrosion resistance. The less noble elements are leached to the environment, and a gold-rich surface layer is formed. Direct contact of blue and purple gold elements with skin should be avoided as exposure to sweat may result in metal leaching and discoloration of the metal surface.[10]

A surface plating of blue gold on karat gold or sterling silver can be achieved by a gold plating of the surface, followed by indium plating, with layer thickness matching the 1:2 atomic ratio. A heat treatment then causes interdiffusion of the metals and formation of the required intermetallic compound.

The problem with your case is its not a good thing. Cleaning or polishing gold buttons (other than removing flux) is usually discouraged. The purity of gold is easy enough to see and so is contaminated gold easy enough to see. By cleaning or polishing, it takes on a new meaning for some. Some people here feel its in bad taste for others to post pictures of gold they refined and have polished or otherwise changed the appearance of the button or bar.Generally, these members are told to refine it again. With all that being said, that is a very pretty piece and could be made into a piece of jewelry.


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## dirkclod

I remelted it and put in pickle this time.


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## goldsilverpro

joubjonn said:


> Pickle it next time you make some AR. It will come out shiny.


In any case, pickling with AR is not advisable since you will dissolve gold and etch the bead. 

Also, any discoloration of the surface indicates impurities throughout the entire bead. For this reason, I only pickled, with dilute sulfuric, for the purpose of removing traces of slag. If discolored, it's always best to re-refine it, assuming you want pure gold. Pickling to remove discoloration only improves the appearance, not the purity.

When I sold gold, I always made sure it was pure and beautiful. The buyers I sold to were knowledgeable enough to simply look at my gold and know it was pure. If I had falsified the purity by removing discoloration, they would soon realize the gold I sold them wasn't pure and my credibility would be in question from that point forward.


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## joubjonn

That makes sense! I plan on re-refining all my pieces anyway. And when I did pickle in AR it was only to remove extra nitric. I don't sell my gold yet. I think I'm just going to horde it until retirement.


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## justinhcase

Sending this off to the assay office next week.
I am hopeful to get a good stamp,
I will make sure the put the hallmarks on the bottom as the top is so pretty.
Thanks all for all your advice.
Just


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## dirkclod

That's Nice !!


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## Geo

goldsilverpro said:


> joubjonn said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pickle it next time you make some AR. It will come out shiny.
> 
> 
> 
> In any case, pickling with AR is not advisable since you will dissolve gold and etch the bead.
> 
> Also, any discoloration of the surface indicates impurities throughout the entire bead. For this reason, I only pickled, with dilute sulfuric, for the purpose of removing traces of slag. If discolored, it's always best to re-refine it, assuming you want pure gold. Pickling to remove discoloration only improves the appearance, not the purity.
> 
> When I sold gold, I always made sure it was pure and beautiful. The buyers I sold to were knowledgeable enough to simply look at my gold and know it was pure. If I had falsified the purity by removing discoloration, they would soon realize the gold I sold them wasn't pure and my credibility would be in question from that point forward.
Click to expand...


so true. The only time anyone wants to test my gold is if it's a person I have never sold to and try to tell them that I am the one who refined it. I've never offered to sell my gold on the forum because I'm afraid that my gold may not be what some people would expect from me. without an assay, it's just a guess as to it's purity. I guess I'm saying I wouldn't want to misrepresent myself. I have found that no matter what they say, if it's a gold buyer on the street or a jeweler, no one pays more than 85%-88% spot max. They would make very little profit from the amount that they buy because there are so many people buying gold. A good solid crash of the gold market would probably be the best thing that could happen to the market as a whole. It would weed out the "cash for gold" buyers and maybe a few refiners but in the end, a true refiner doesn't care about the market as they will make the same commission regardless of the market price.


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## justinhcase

In the U.K. it is actually against the law to sell any thing as gold unless it has been through one of the Assay office's.
Most gold buyers will offer you as little as half price of what they buy as it has to be classed as scrap.
But once you have a piece (be that jewelry or ingot)that has been stamped by a government run office after been assayed.
Any one can buy with confidence as the penalty for falsifying a mark is very stiff so Only people in china have dared to try .
And having a hallmark of your own is quite nice giving your end product an unimpeachable pedigree.
Got to love a stamp of a crown on gold so you can ask above spot for each bar.(At least I hope I can will have to see how meany 9's I get.)


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## samuel-a

New gold bullion pour...


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## FrugalRefiner

You do really nice work Sam!

Dave


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## g_axelsson

That's a thing of pure beauty!

Thanks for sharing!

Göran


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## Clneal2003

lazersteve said:


> Great job Tom.
> 
> Here's a gold muffin I made last week:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Steve



How long before those stains come off your hands? I had my first run in with them last night and now my hand is a psychedelic tie die of blue and purple.


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## Lou

Time was when you could wash them off with CN .


Try thiosulfate on the stains.

Lou


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## samuel-a

I'm not sure if those are from silver nitrate... but it looks similar. If it is, it will take a 5-10 days and it will peel off.

I never had such stains from anything but silver nitrate.


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## Claudie

How did you even notice the stains behind a muffin that size? :shock:


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## Geo

I panicked once when a beaker of AuCl broke and I mopped it up with paper towels. I wasn't wearing gloves and squeezed the first towel to continue mopping. The next day my fingers were purple. I washed profusely after the accident so it just proved to me that dissolved metals soak into your skin.


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## necromancer

it comes off the skin shortly, it will stay in your nails for a long time.


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## Smack

Chemicals can penetrate the skin and get into the blood stream in as little as 5 seconds or even less depending on the chemical.


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## Clneal2003

Today is my first skin clean day... All the skin fell off. Looked like a lizard for a few days. Nails slowly growing out the stain. Weirdest thing. I'm working part time at a printing center and people kept thinking it was ink. . "Lady if that was ink... I'd wash it off." A few ex military understood though, the old silver nitrate in the shower head prank. Apparently guys did that to the newbies 30 years ago. 

Get back to the inspiring photos. My nug is up to 3.8. I'm shooting for a 10gram kit kat bar.


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## Clneal2003

3.8g  sitting on a penny... Sitting on ole honest Abe's face.


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## etack

Clneal2003 said:


> Today is my first skin clean day... All the skin fell off. Looked like a lizard for a few days. Nails slowly growing out the stain. Weirdest thing. I'm working part time at a printing center and people kept thinking it was ink. . "Lady if that was ink... I'd wash it off."  *A few ex military understood though, the old silver nitrate in the shower head prank. Apparently guys did that to the newbies 30 years ago. *
> 
> Get back to the inspiring photos. My nug is up to 3.8. I'm shooting for a 10gram kit kat bar.



Just to be clear this is very dangerous and can cause blindness. There is no cure for silver nitrate in your eyes.

Not saying you are advocating this but Google search can turn up some crazy finds.

OK...

Great looking button too!!!

Eric


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## Claudie

That is a very nice looking button. :mrgreen:


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## mls26cwru

well, guess i might as well add my new button to this mix 8) 

wt: 32.1g
Source: BGA chip (using patnors method... Thanks pat!!)
double refined, flame polished







http://i59.tinypic.com/1zoeudu.jpg
that link might help.... its wierd, i can see the pic on my computer, but not on my phone... did i do something wrong in how i linked the photo?


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## butcher

Wish I could see it.


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## Claudie

I can see it. 
Very nice! Looks so shiny almost polished.


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## patnor1011

Job well done.
Do you have more details like starting weight of material...?


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## mls26cwru

sorry for the late reply, but I had to go back over my numbers and do some figuring as I accidentally threw away the paper with an important weight on it :shock: 

all told, it was about 5.0 kg of BGA chips... i got lucky as nearly 85% of them *did not* have a heat sink/spreader in them... i do believe this could throw the final weight % ratio off quite a bit. With all considerations, it came out to about 0.6 wt% of the chip is gold in this case. I would expect to see a lower number if there had been more chips with heat spreaders in my batch, maybe as low as 0.4%.

Mike


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## Anonymous

6g per Kg sounds about right to be honest.


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## necromancer

spaceships said:


> 6g per Kg sounds about right to be honest.



i would agree


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## g_axelsson

6g/kg is within margins. I calculate 5g/kg for full BGA chips and 10g/kg for the epoxy tops.
Anyone have separate numbers for the fiber bases?

Göran


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## justinhcase

Still have not got to Four Nines.
I'll get you next time you 0.01%


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## patnor1011

Very nice. How much is the cost of hallmarking bar?


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## justinhcase

You have to register which cost's about £60 and takes several mounts to come through.
Then it is about £50 if you include postage.
I use the Sheffield office at the moment as the London office charges almost an extra £100 per bar.
But some people value the crown stamp over the rose stamp,I may register with the London office as well if I find any client willing to pay the premium.
But have not found anyone to pay full spot let alone over.My attempt's to by pass the established dealers has resulted in quite a bit of hostile communication.
And my eBay account has been flooded with people trying to use what are obviously bogus accounts to cause problems.
So I must be getting close to offering a little competition.
But sales are causing a bit of a bottle neck.
Unfortunately I have had one or two problems with a property development so I will not have the time to address my metal business properly for a little while.
My structural engineer did the calculations to put an opening right in the back of my house.He recommended using five acro-props and strong boys.
Unfortunately when I brought in a second opinion it turns out I have to install a hole support frame and take out the entire rear of the property to get the finish I want.
So that is me up to m neck until next year.
If any one knows of a good trust worthy bullion buyer in the u.k. it would be quite handy to let him have what little stock I have .
I really wish I could afford to keep my first bar but the House is more important.
If I run out of budget I may be forced to deal with the dishonest local middle men.


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## Clneal2003

has anyone, besides me, ever held a beaker full of nitric processed gold to their ear after adding AR?! It sounds like metallic popcorn! Pop pop pop! It is a sound of encouragement - can't really share too well at this time with my current equipment. May try to figure something out later but it's totally worth given it a moment of your time.

Don't worry too much... I wrapped very well inside of plastic wrap and a baggy but you can still hear it very clearly. Way cooler than the sound of the ocean!


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