# Newbie's first gold



## Duxthe1 (Nov 26, 2011)

Hi all, thanks to this forum I've got two pieces to show off. The larger is a 4.1gram button I hammered into a "coin". It was from placer gold I dredged. I dissolved my poke into AR, added a little sulphuric, filtered, and dropped with SMB. Two hot water washes and it was melted into a button and then hammered flat and stamped with a "4". I know I could have refined it for greater purity but my main objective was separating it from the sands and impurities. The original poke weight was almost 9 grams. I was surprised with how much white crud appeared upon dissolving. I didn't think that much of my poke weight was silver. Even though my "coin" is a little lighter than I'd hoped, I'm in no way disappointed with the outcome. The knowledge and experience gained is priceless.

My second piece is from about 150g of misc. pins treated with AP. After about 90% dissolved in AP I filtered the foils and melted the entire filter for the tiny button. It's purity is quite low, I'm sure, but the small amount of foils didn't seem worth a dissolution and precipitation. The entire impure button is less than .1gram. Figure I'll use it when I need to get rid of nitric in another solution. Regardless of its low purity, its my first E-scrap success, and it feels great.

Thanks to all who contribute to this great forum, couldn't have done it without you.

-Duck-


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## Harold_V (Nov 26, 2011)

The yield is a little alarming. I hope you didn't discard the filter. Pretty good chance there's a fair amount of gold included with the silver chloride. If you're interested, I'll give you some guidelines for recovery of both the silver and gold. 

Harold


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## Duxthe1 (Nov 26, 2011)

I did save the filter! A fair bit of my lost weight was a mix of light and dark sands in addition to the silver and lead. About 1/3 my total volume didn't dissolve. I was just surprised how much silver there was. I was under the impression that the Colorado placer gold is a rather high karat.  Where I dredge most of the gold is very fine and difficult to clean up with gravity methods, hence the excess sands, and the decision to process in AR. 

I've processed some scrap silver and cemented it out of solution with good results. Thus far though I've had little luck dealing with any Ag/Cl I've created. I planned to eventually incinerate the filter and melt a button once I've got enough filters with values trapped to make it worthwhile. I'm open to any other suggestions.


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## Harold_V (Nov 26, 2011)

I expect that you don't have nearly as much silver as you may think (it won't be greater than 50%). Some of the undissolved material you speak of is likely placer gold that has ceased dissolving because the impervious layer of silver chloride that formed has encapsulated the bits, stopping the process. That's typically what happens when you try to dissolve gold that has in excess of 10% silver content. 

If you attempt to melt the residue, you're most likely to lose some of the silver. Borax, alone, won't effect a full recovery. My suggestion to you is to melt the material with soda ash and borax---which should reduce the silver chloride to elemental silver. The resulting button may be of such a nature that it will part directly with nitric acid, leaving behind the gold as either a fine powder, or as a seemingly solid form (depends on the gold/silver ratio how this plays out). I fully expect that you'll recover more gold. 

Harold


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