# Hand Scraping Gold from Circuit boards....



## Luckie101

I have been doing this for a while now .. collecting on gold scrap, urban mining mostly cell phones. I constantly have questions and am always 
up for learning. I have read many forums and watched many video's and countless of times it has been mentioned that scraping off the gold from Circuit Boards
is one of the more efficient but time consuming was to recover the gold. I am trying to gather as much gold as I can before undergoing the big refining shabang. So far pulling pins from computer circuit boards ( CPU /tv's/ any cell phone ... old thrown out electric boxes, etc. etc.) Now I have decided to give scraping with a 
blade , some gloves,and my safety glasses a try. I still need to know if it is as efficient as I've heard over and over again. Also is there a better way to go about this that i need to know? 

Thank you for all the Help, My mind is open and ready for more... 
thanks again to gold refining forum for the guidance :lol:


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## Geo

dont waste your time trying to scrape gold foil off with a blade. where ever you heard that was a good idea, its a bad idea. im sure you didnt read it here and im also equally sure you didnt see a video from anyone here scraping foils with a blade. a couple of reason this is not good.

its very difficult. the gold is plated to a copper underlay that has in turn a nickel layer and then the gold. if you did manage to peel some off, it would still be copper,nickel and gold foil.

it would be too time consuming. a pound of clean cut finger connectors contains two grams of gold. one pound of fingers will almost fill a ziplok sandwich bag. it takes fifteen pounds of fingers to make an ounce of gold. you would be scraping fingers for a year and would still have to refine it.

learn the correct way to process them or sell them like they are. go to Lazersteves website http://www.goldrecovery.us watch his videos on AP and finger foils. 

also go to the guided tour and take some time to read some of the post and reactions list.

download and read C.M. Hoke's book "refining precious metal waste" http://www.scribd.com/doc/2815953/Refining-Precious-Metal-Wastes-C-M-Hoke

it was written many years ago and doesnt deal with Escrap, but what she teaches is how to process the different metal along with testing in simple to read and understand terms. that way when you need help, you can ask in a way we can understand you and you can understand the answer back.


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## NobleMetalWorks

I buy processed scrap from this ancient old retired barnacle (only way I can describe this guy). He is one of those gritty old knurled knuckled John Wayne types, he doesn't know his own age but he looks like he's in his 90s. He sits around all day doing nothing but breaking down old electronic equipment he has collected for decades.

He sold me 5 lbs of gold foils that he had used a planner to scrap off fingerboards that were not cut from the board. He said it took him 3 weeks to scrape that much off the boards, with a planner, that's how difficult it is.

There was a post on this forum, several actually, that talked about how to remove the finger boards from the board itself. There was someone, who I cannot remember at the moment, that had made a very simple tool that works perfectly. I am using the same tool myself when I need to, and I made one for this old geezer to use also. It's just a slot cut into a 2x4, you cut the slot deep enough for fingers, you simple put the finger into the slot, bend the board and snap it right off.

You can do the same thin in a vice.

The other reason I wouldn't plane anything, or scrap anything off a PCB board is because of the toxic stuff you are scrapping off along with it, some of which could become airborne and end up in your lungs. If you think Asbestos is bad, read the MSDS on PCBs.

On a different note, I was thinking about a glass blaster to remove gold plate from PCBs, but again you encounter the same problem with pieces of the PCB coming off and then having to deal with them. You could glass blast in a glovebox, but even still, you would have to deal with the fine PCB particles.

There are no short cuts when it comes to safety. What you are suggesting works, but works worse than any other method that has been posted and used on these forums. You might want to take a little time and search the forum for those posts. You would be surprised what the 100s of years of combined accumulated experience has brought to the table and made available for everyone to learn from.

Scott


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## butcher

This ancient old retired barnacle, gritty old knurled knuckled John Wayne types, he doesn't know his own age, this old geezer.

Boy Am I glad we will never grow older, 8)


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## NobleMetalWorks

butcher said:


> This ancient old retired barnacle, gritty old knurled knuckled John Wayne types, he doesn't know his own age, this old geezer.
> 
> Boy Am I glad we will never grow older, 8)



Lol,


> EDITED: Lol means laugh out loud. I try not to use it and did so by mistake in this thread. I wanted to clarify what I meant.


 I'm afraid I have not done him justice. He's tough in a way that a man becomes after he gain's his old man strength. My grandfather is this way, nothing slows him down, tough as nails, etc. In my attempt to give a favorable impression of this guy, I ended up making him some like something I didn't intend. I have a world of respect for him, and his tenacity. I just cannot imagine trying to scrape gold off of fingerboards with a pocket knife for 3 weeks. Seems crazy to me.

Scott


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## qst42know

Growing old is a good thing because the alternative just sucks. :mrgreen:


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## jmdlcar

Not to start anything but dose lol mean if is something about txt message then I have no idea.


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## Geo

yep Jack, it means "laugh out loud".


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## NobleMetalWorks

jmdlcar said:


> Not to start anything but dose lol mean if is something about txt message then I have no idea.



It does mean Laugh out Loud, I try not to use it, but I have been using it when emailing other tech guys, talking via chat messengers, etc for years. It's a bad habit, and a hard one to break. 

Scott


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## jmdlcar

I have never use stuff or word like that and never will.

Edit This is off topic sorry.


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## Marcel

Since not everybody is able to handle acids etc. and some people simply do have the time and no money, I regard scraping as a way to at least make some money for some people.
We should not forget the situations in soem countries in this world where wellfare is unknown but hunger is not. So if anyone is desperate and in need for the money, why not?
It may even be, taht some clever guys find a fast and well working way to scrape off gold.
As for the toxic aspect, I do not see too much danger in that. The particles that are removed by this rather brutal method are big and if you really worry about that spray some water on the PCB to avoid smaller particles from flying away. Burning and incinerating PCBs is what really creates big problems. I have handled PCBs for nearly 2 decades, broke them apart and did many other things to them and I dont worry about my health, as long as you dont saw,blast or burn this stuff.
I would rather really see someone on Youtube who could show me how he does it. My attempts have failed, I dont know which tool is best and which way to handle it.
Flash-plated PCBs wont work at all. You start to scratch and imm. end up on a nickel layer that is hard as hell.
But I could imagine that you could even build a machine that does the scraping, one like a plane.(is that the right word?)


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## steyr223

Hey everyone , hows everything

I have always used a spare or replacement blade for a plane
from home depo+ . The bigger one is $2.98
But I don't scrape the board I split the board.
So far all the boards that I do have no solder on the back
therefore it can go straight into a/p , then I proceed to cut up
The front , being carefull to cut all the pieces of solder out

I tried to do it steves way with a heat gun and it works
awesome but it leaves little dots of solder on the board
And I was told any amount of solder is to much

Hopes this helps steyr223


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## eesakiwi

I saw on TV some Russians removing the gold fingers off boards with a 'finger sander'.
Basicly its a small angle grinder with a 22mm wide sanding belt attached to it.
They had these huge boards & were just sanding the fingers off, they would then put the fibre/gold dust in a pan & heat it/acid etch & then sell the refined dust by the KG.


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## Geo

eesakiwi said:


> I saw on TV some Russians removing the gold fingers off boards with a 'finger sander'.
> Basicly its a small angle grinder with a 22mm wide sanding belt attached to it.
> They had these huge boards & were just sanding the fingers off, they would then put the fibre/gold dust in a pan & heat it/acid etch & then sell the refined dust by the KG.



wonder what their life expectancy was. this is the same government that sent people into a melting down reactor after the robots fried from radiation and then designated the workers they sent in as "bio-robots".


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