# my first 1 OZT gold bar



## Geo (Aug 16, 2011)

thank you guys for all the advise. ive made buttons and BB's but this is the first bar ive made. i give everyone here the credit for me being able to do it.


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## Harold_V (Aug 16, 2011)

Congrats on your success, but it is my opinion that your gold is far from pure. Both color and texture are not great. 

Harold


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## Geo (Aug 16, 2011)

i will have it tested. i may refine it again.


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## dtectr (Aug 16, 2011)

Geo said:


> i will have it tested. i may refine it again.


I would save the expense of the test and melt, pour into shot or Harold's "cornflakes", & reprocess. 
If the gold is pure you can't hide it. If its not pure, well, you can't hide that either.

just my dos centavos.


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## Geo (Aug 16, 2011)

yea. it was 18k  looks like a redo, ill reprocess and recast tomorrow.


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## philddreamer (Aug 16, 2011)

Still, very nice brother! You get to practice some more! 8)


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## Geo (Aug 18, 2011)

ok. update. after digesting i found 5.6 grams of silver. after checking my stock i discovered a vial of Ag powder missing that contained 6.1 grams. i may have found the source of my contamination. i have been letting my 13 year old help me (safely) with my refining. he may have added the Ag powder thinking it was gold :roll: (thats my story and im sticking to it). :lol: now i need to rinse and melt and recast.


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## dtectr (Aug 18, 2011)

You are doing a great job& thanks for keeping us posted on the progress.
dtectr


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## Geo (Aug 19, 2011)

ok. second attempt. please tell me if this looks any better. i havent had it tested yet, waiting to see what you all think.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Aug 19, 2011)

That is looking good, but I feel you still have some impurities in it. I think you are setting around 97%. Good luck with it.


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## goldenchild (Aug 20, 2011)

Make sure you thoroughly clean out the mold you are using. You'll probably also want to use a brand new crucible. The one used to melt the first ingot is contaminated.


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## Geo (Aug 20, 2011)

as a matter of fact i just ordered three more 3" melting dishes from steves website. i noticed when i melted the first batch there was a black substance left in the dish under the cooled borax glass. i assumed it was a stain on the dish itself but when i poured this one the black was gone thats when i order the three extra dishes from steve last night.


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## goldenchild (Aug 20, 2011)

Yes. Pure gold should leave behind either a purple color or no color at all. The contaminated crucibles however are not lost. You can use them for incineration, inquarting, torch drying and so on. You could even clean them out to a respectable degree using soda ash. Not enough to melt pure gold again but pretty close.


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## macfixer01 (Aug 21, 2011)

Geo said:


> ok. second attempt. please tell me if this looks any better. i havent had it tested yet, waiting to see what you all think.View attachment 1




Most all gold looks nice to me, especially when it's mine. This definitely looks nicer than the first bar though. If as you say your first bar was 1 Troy Ounce (around 31.1 Grams) of 18K, and the second attempt weighs 29.8 grams then that alone tells you you're not quite there yet. Refining from 18K to 24K it should lose 1/4 of the weight and end up around 23.325 Grams. You're making progress though, nice work!

macfixer01


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## Geo (Aug 21, 2011)

actually i tried to top off the ounce with some Au powder that i was sure of but for some reason an ounce of powder never melts to an ounce, at least not for me. my new melting dishes will be in this week and ill try again. this is something that i cant afford not to do correctly . i have dedicated glassware for the gold recovery and dedicated chemicals for the same purpose so i shouldnt have any more cross contamination. the dissolution and precipitation process, i believe, is not the part im having trouble with. its the melting and casting where the trouble starts. i dissolve the powder and foils and precipitate in clean glassware. let it settle then decant to small amount of liquid then transfer to a graduated cylinder then decant after settling. transfer to a large vessel and rinse with boiling water to remove salts. then dissolve in hcl+cl and filter into clean glassware. after waiting overnight add equal volume of distilled water and precipitate with SMB using clean utensils. let settle then decant to small amount of liquid transfer to graduated cylinder settle and decant. transfer to larger vessel and rinse with boiling distilled water to remove salt. evaporate water and tranfer clean dry powder to plastic bottle with screw on lid. i do the same thing every time the same way every time.


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## Harold_V (Aug 22, 2011)

Your handling of precipitated gold is terrible. At no time do I read of you washing with anything but water. You will not achieve a high degree of purity that way unless you precipitate from a *very* clean solution. 

Surely you've heard of washing the precipitated gold with HCl? I did that routinely and had no problems achieving a high level of purity---so high that no traces of oxidation are evident in melted gold. 

A comment on weight loss when melting. 
Two things are happening. One of them is you most likely are NOT force drying your gold. The other is because it isn't pure, you may notice that there are, for lack of better description, tiny "shooting stars" that emanate from the powder as it melts. Those shooting stars are microscopic particles of gold being ejected. If you'd melt in a very clean area, you'll be able to recover them as tiny spheres. 

Harold


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## goldenchild (Aug 22, 2011)

The bowl of shot surfaces once more :lol:


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## Geo (Aug 22, 2011)

ok. so i wash precipitate with fresh hcl acid every time? i got that, making notes right now. so there are oxides present even if everything else is clean? i guess you cant get all the impurities out till the final wash. is two separate dissolution's adequate or should there be more?


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## goldenchild (Aug 22, 2011)

Two is the norm to get high purity gold. First digestion, ppt, rinse. Second digestion, ppt, rinse, melt.


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## 4metals (Aug 22, 2011)

If you're starting with karat gold scrap, inquarting in silver and parting will get you to 99% quick and easy, in my opinion this can also count as your first refining. Putting up the "almost fine" 99% pure in aqua regia should get you the purity you need on the second refine. (actually first refine in aqua regia)


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## Harold_V (Aug 22, 2011)

Geo said:


> ok. so i wash precipitate with fresh hcl acid every time?


The results of washing with HCl will be VERY evident. Take the material to a boil, and allow to boil for several minutes---fifteen or so. You'll notice that the solution changes color, as does the gold itself. Rinse by boiling with water, then wash with ammonium hydroxide. Rinse, then boil a second time with HCl, followed by a final rinse with water. Force dry the resulting gold by slowly heating while it's still in the beaker. Slowly heating, coupled with regular swirling of the gold, will ensure you don't experience steam explosions, plus the gold won't glue to the beaker. 

Drag down is a serious problem when refining gold. If you extract gold from a dirty solution, if for no other reason, contaminants in the solution are dragged down (mechanically, not chemically) along with the gold. As the gold clumps, it traps the contaminants within. It is for that reason that one provides a prolonged boil------to leach the contaminants from the gold. 

You will likely notice that the ammonium hydroxide wash yields a blue solution. It removes traces of copper, along with any silver chloride that may have made its way through the filtration and precipitation process. 

I developed this washing procedure over several attempts to achieve gold of higher quality. It works, and very well. 

Harold


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## Geo (Aug 22, 2011)

great. thank you so much for your advise. as soon as i get my melting dishes in i'll try another bar and see what i can do. I've been experimenting with the testing acids to try and identify different carat gold so i dont have to pay to have someone do it for me.


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## NoIdea (Aug 22, 2011)

Harold - Thank you very much, I was looking for this, I have seen it elsewhere. I am getting close so this information was timely.

Again, Thank You  

Deano


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## goldenchild (Aug 23, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> Take the material to a boil, and allow to boil for several minutes---fifteen or so. You'll notice that the solution changes color, as does the gold itself. Rinse by boiling with water, then wash with ammonium hydroxide. Rinse, then boil a second time with HCl, followed by a final rinse with water.



Boil means boil here. Not "boil".


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## Harold_V (Aug 24, 2011)

goldenchild said:


> Harold_V said:
> 
> 
> > Take the material to a boil, and allow to boil for several minutes---fifteen or so. You'll notice that the solution changes color, as does the gold itself. Rinse by boiling with water, then wash with ammonium hydroxide. Rinse, then boil a second time with HCl, followed by a final rinse with water.
> ...


I try to ensure that the word "boil" is used properly. It is NEVER mentioned when one is evaporating, aside from the caution to NOT boil the solution. 

In the case of washing, the vigorous action of boiling performs a very valuable task. It keeps the solution in constant motion, flushing contaminants from within. To heat and allow the material to sit idle would require considerably more time and effort to accomplish the same end. 

There's one operation that relies critically on boiling. Those that have processed polishing wastes chemically will attest, if you do not achieve a vigorous boil, you experience localized heating. The bottom contents of a beaker will have dissolved some of the material, and then slowly becomes superheated. That dries the contents that are in contact with the beaker. Two things happen. One of them is the contents get well fused to the beaker. The other is that when you disturb the contents that have yet to fuse, the rapid temperature change of the solution making contact with the beaker results in thermal fracture. I rarely actually broke a beaker open, but experienced serious cracking. 

Boil when appropriate. It's your friend, much the same as incineration, when appropriate, is your friend. 

Wish to succeed in refining? Don't ignore all these little tips. They spell a huge difference in the outcome of one's efforts. 

Harold


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## Geo (Aug 26, 2011)

ok. i applied the advise you gave me and instead of making a whole bar i just did 12 grams to see if the outcome would improve with the process you described. this is the results. should i make my bars or should i keep trying to get more pure? sorry about the grainy photos, my son deleted the top view just as the batteries died.


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## philddreamer (Aug 26, 2011)

Now that's what we been talking about!!! :mrgreen: 

I bet you noticed the color & shine on that beauty this time. 

Good job, Bro!


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## Harold_V (Aug 26, 2011)

Yep! Color (and texture) is quite good. 
If, after melting, the surface isn't shiny, the results leave something to be desired. 

Harold


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## stihl88 (Aug 26, 2011)

When you can see the paper towel glowing also, that's usually another good sign :mrgreen:


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