# Smelting gold



## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

My blob has a grey/black color to it. Even the borax glass is black. Any idea why and how to remedy this?






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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 12, 2017)

Corro, welcome to the forum. Your images are too large to be displayed. You need to reduce the width to less than 1,400 pixels wide.

Dave


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

How to I edit my post? Lol

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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 12, 2017)

Look for an icon that looks like a pencil or something similar. 

Or you can just make a new post with the pics.

Dave


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## jimdoc (Apr 12, 2017)

What exactly does "My blob" consist of?
Did you buy it from Ebay?


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

Gold recovery from ram fingers and CPU in Ap solution. Then Used muratic acid and nitric acid to dissolve gold and stumpout to drop the gold

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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

jimdoc said:


> What exactly does "My blob" consist of?
> Did you buy it from Ebay?


Gold foil from finger and CPU that I recovered myself using ap. Refined using aqua regia. Stumpout was used to drop the gold.

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## jimdoc (Apr 12, 2017)

What type CPU's and how many? And how many ram fingers?
You should have done the fingers and CPU's separate.


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

About 470 fingers. Then 25 processors. Gold from the 2 batches were then combined 

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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

The cpus were original pentium and a few other ceramic and some green fiber.

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## jimdoc (Apr 12, 2017)

Looks like you still have base metals in there to me.
You probably rushed things with the CPUs before the base metals were all gone.
Even mixing CPU types is a mistake.


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

jimdoc said:


> Looks like you still have base metals in there to me.
> You probably rushed things with the CPUs before the base metals were all gone.
> Even mixing CPU types is a mistake.


How can I remedy this? 

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## solar_plasma (Apr 12, 2017)

There is a good chance, that you coprecipitated copper by using too much SMB. A way to avoid this, is to add not much more than a good gramm SMB per gramm gold expected. Then check with stannous chloride if more SMB is needed.

As far as I understand from your description (if it is comlete) you did some other mistakes. Where did you learn the process?

Did you wash the gold? How did you wash?


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

Youtube lol

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## anachronism (Apr 12, 2017)

solar_plasma said:


> There is a good chance, that you coprecipitated copper by using too much SMB. A way to avoid this, is to add not much more than a good gramm SMB per gramm gold expected. Then check with stannous chloride if more SMB is needed.
> 
> As far as I understand from your description (if it is comlete) you did some other mistakes. Where did you learn the process?
> 
> Did you wash the gold? How did you wash?



Bjorn Hi  

If you clean your gold in HCl then any copper coming out with the SMB by way of drag down is virtually eliminated. It never brings that much down anyway no matter how much SMB you use. Looking at the crucible, no washing of the gold was done at all. 

Jon


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

I rinsed with distilled water

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## anachronism (Apr 12, 2017)

You need to look up the washing procedures on here Corro. Alternated HCl/water washes will remove the vast majority of base metals from your gold.

Hope that helps. 

Jon


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

Ok. Thank you 

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## anachronism (Apr 12, 2017)

My pleasure.


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

anachronism said:


> My pleasure.


What about my current blob? Lol. Drop it back onto aqua regia? 

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## solar_plasma (Apr 12, 2017)

Hi Jon, well, we don't know how much SMB he used, maybe more, than you ever tried.  

Corro, first of all read Hoke, read about the process in this forum, how to avoid excess nitric, how to test, how to use sulfamic acid and SMB AND how to wash - read Harold's post: Harold's pure gold shining post

also view waste treatment and safety


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

Ok. Thank you also! 

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## anachronism (Apr 12, 2017)

solar_plasma said:


> Hi Jon, well, we don't know how much SMB he used, maybe more, than you ever tried.



Oh I can promise you that I have on occasion shovelled the stuff in old friend


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

I do think that I may have gone overboard with the smb. Lol

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## g_axelsson (Apr 12, 2017)

Most I've seen any one used was two pounds of SMB for 10 grams of gold... that was a mess. :lol: 

Göran


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## solar_plasma (Apr 12, 2017)

But Jon is right, any CuCl is easily dissolved and removed in the washing step. Nevertheless I understand it as good craftmanship to do any step painstakenly. Any part per 10000 (so it might be as little as some 0,1mg) might be reduced in the flame and cost some numbers from the intended 9999.


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## Corro69 (Apr 12, 2017)

This was my second batch... My first turned out a 22k 1.7gram bead...was quite happy with it 

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