# not a button YET



## rewalston (Jun 16, 2014)

well, I have a nice greenish/yellow solution now. Letting it gas off bleach. This is from all of the pins I had and boards I've been working on. I'm pretty sure that it still has some copper in it from the green, but it's pretty much crystal clear, filtered it twice to make sure all the sediment was clean. Definitely well need a second refining, which I'm hoping to do in something besides my coffee pot (spare one not the one I make coffee with). I only have a 400ml beaker and a 1000ml filter flask. With the 2nd refining I'm pretty sure the small beaker will be big enough.

Rusty


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## Geo (Jun 16, 2014)

Looks good so far. The solution will lighten and then darken when you add the SMB. By darken I mean even after the gold drops, the solution will be much darker than it is now.


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## necromancer (Jun 16, 2014)

you can use an egg cup for your second refine, you will only need a small amount of acid & a little bleach
or a test tube, i always try to do the math before adding my acids, makes for less waste solution.

even though its not a button yet i can already see it shining


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## rewalston (Jun 16, 2014)

Thanks Dave. It is pretty to look at. I have no clue as to how much it will be when done. Going to take my time on it. I'll probably let it gas off and evaporate a little bit before I do anything to it, a day or two. Going to be humid tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll get to it before Wednesday. Either way it will be done. 

Rusty


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## philddreamer (Jun 16, 2014)

Hi Rusty!

It would be a good idea to place the beaker inside some type of recipient, just in case of breakage or tip over. If you loose any solution, its going to hurt! :mrgreen: 

Take care!

Phil


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## rewalston (Jun 16, 2014)

Thanks Phil, I have a Pyrex casserole dish I can set it in. I picked up some sand this evening to make a sand bath. The only hotplate I've got has spiral coil..not solid surface. I'm hoping that it will work ok, for the first (dirty) drop I'm not going to use the heat. It should be nice and hot here already .


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## necromancer (Jun 16, 2014)

rewalston said:


> Thanks Phil, I have a Pyrex casserole dish I can set it in. I picked up some sand this evening to make a sand bath. The only hotplate I've got has spiral coil..not solid surface. I'm hoping that it will work ok, for the first (dirty) drop I'm not going to use the heat. It should be nice and hot here already .



drop by your local value village or salvation army type store & look for a vintage pyroceram corningware dish, i get them there all the time

https://www.google.ca/search?q=pyro...aB8AHI5oDACw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1093&bih=530

the ones i have are a deeper blue flower print, made in canada with the markings:

P - 10 or pyroceram on the bottom. you can use these on your heating coil. you can incinerate in them, you can use nitric in them, you can use AR in them, i am sure if you ever get attacked by a 500 pound gorilla that you could defend yourself with these dishes, they are tough
and for about $5.00 each you cant go wrong


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## Geo (Jun 16, 2014)

I've made mine glow brightly on my propane burner.


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## necromancer (Jun 16, 2014)

Geo said:


> I've made mine glow brightly on my propane burner.



my hotplate is a old portable BBQ, i have drilled extra holes in the tube that supplies the propane to the "cook" area.
originally the flame only flowed to the front & back of the BBQ so i drilled holes so the flame gets to the middle of the BBQ, it will get the dish red hot too.


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## rewalston (Jun 16, 2014)

These are the two pans I have, one is amber the other is the casserole dish, both say stovetop, oven and microwave. They both need to be cleaned..


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## Geo (Jun 16, 2014)

the white with blue corn flower pattern should have a large P on the bottom somewhere.


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## rewalston (Jun 16, 2014)

I'll check it tomorrow when it's light out...white bottom and off-white writing...hard to see.


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## necromancer (Jun 16, 2014)

i am waiting to find one of these handles at the discount stores

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Cor...405?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19eeba2e7d


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## rewalston (Jun 17, 2014)

I looked at the frying pan, it says Vision, Corning, Canada..that's it. The casserole dish says corning ware, stove, microwave, oven and I didn't see a letter "P" best I can make out is A-2-B. Still have excess Cl in the solution takes a long time for the q-tip to start changing colors. It does shift from greenish to a purplish.


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## necromancer (Jun 17, 2014)

this is a big listing,
http://corningware411.blogspot.ca/2011/09/greetings-and-salutations.html

use your browser's search function to find your code, (windows computer ? Ctrl + F)


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## rewalston (Jun 17, 2014)

Thanks for the link Dave, it appears from the blog, that if it's marked with an "A", it's pyrocream.


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## necromancer (Jun 17, 2014)

glad it helped :!:


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## rewalston (Jun 22, 2014)

I finally got to working on this again the other day. I added SMB and had a lot of fizzing. As the coffee pot is the largest container that I have (at the moment) I couldn't add water to dilute the solution. As this has a lot of water in it already I figured that it didn't need any more. Holy crow does SMB stink. Yes I did this outside and had plenty air around. I didn't get a color change like I was expecting, so I let it sit over night. The next day, there was a definite color change it looked like dirty water instead of lime cool-aide. Because I had over 12 cups of solution (as measured by the coffee pot markings) I decided to make life a little easier and evaporate the solution down to something a little more manageable. I made a sand bath with my square casserole dish and sat the coffee pot on it. It took me 3 days to get it down to roughly 2 cups. I would let it slowly simmer for about 5 or 6 hours and then when it started getting dark out, I'd turn the propane stove I'm using off and set everything in the shed, in case it rained. I was going to use the hotplate that I have, but it doesn't get hot enough to warm a cold coffee, so decided to use the propane stove. Then I ran out of propane and had to pick some up today. So the first day it only evaporated off about a cup, using the hotplate...about 6 hours for 1 cup. Then yesterday about 4 cups evaporated off until I ran out of propane. Today, I got another 4 cups evaporated. I can't tell how much is left, the solution is down to the metal band on the pot and is very dark. I'm going to transfer it tomorrow to a 1000ml filter flask I have and use it to further reduce the volume of solution, by half. Then it should fit in the 400ml beaker that I have. I'll be using this beaker to do the drop and washes. With the amount of bleach that was involved and the amount of solution I'm pretty sure that there is going to be salts that will form over night. I'm going to filter the solution before it goes into the beaker.


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## rewalston (Jun 24, 2014)

didn't use the filter flask as I was thinking. I filtered the solution back and forth about 6 times, between a small plastic bucket and my coffee pot. Tested green solution with SnCl, no gold in solution. So I got all the gold powder in the filter. Really black color. I then measured out 100 ml of HCl and 25 ml of Bleach and poured it into the filter, back and forth between the 400ml beaker and coffee pot about 6 times as well to dissolve everything into solution and rinsed the filter clean. Below is a picture of the end result. I'm letting it set until tomorrow and then I'll re-drop and do washes, IN the beaker, no more transferring solutions. By the way the solution is crystal clear...the cloudy look is on the outside of the beaker.


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## Clneal2003 (Jul 5, 2014)

Will my precipitate be I nicer brown if I digest this again? This was my first run ever and it is one hell of a rush! :shock: How many times do people usually digest in hcl CL before melting? I also have some AU powder left on my filter as some AU was floating on top of the solution. The rest I decanted down as much as possible. That's distiller water in with the powder. Do you generally hot hcl wash before redigesting or just wait until your done digesting the AU in hcl CL?

Thanks for any feed back.


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## Clneal2003 (Jul 5, 2014)

Will this AU powder turn to a better brown when I redigesting it? This was my first ever hcl CL cycle and I was on one hell of a rush! :mrgreen: another Q... Do you bother hot hcl rinsing before redissolving in hcl CL or just wait until after your last digestion? Right now that's sitting in with distiller H2O.

Any tips on getting a good button poured/made? I started melting down solid 10 k broken jewelry and couldn't master getting a good button shape. I can pour a mean 2toz silver ingot but not good at messing with small quantities. Also should I be cautious of my AU powder blowing away when I fire up my MAP torch? 

Any feedback is tremendously appreciated.


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## rewalston (Jul 5, 2014)

your powder looks good for a first drop. My project has been put on hold until I get more materials and glassware. Fumble fingers here, dropped a 1 lb propane tank and broke my beaker. So every thing is in my stock pot and will have to recover it again later. Nothing lost, I doubt I had a gram of gold in my pot.


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## necromancer (Jul 5, 2014)

"value village" type stores have glassware, you never know what you will find.

talking with the owners helps too !!


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## maynman1751 (Jul 5, 2014)

> Do you bother hot hcl rinsing before redissolving in hcl CL or just wait until after your last digestion?


Yes, you perform all of the wash cycles between drops. That helps clean your gold powder. There's no sense in redissolving and dropping contaminants!


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## coppermine (Jul 5, 2014)

Pyrex is best obviously, but in a pinch, you can place a piece of painters wire mesh between the round electric burner and coffee pot. Just don"t turn it up real high. 
Starting out, I used an old coffee pot FOR the burner. Mr Coffee's get the hottest. I use the base from an old propane turkey fryer now.


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