# Salt & Vinegar method



## Goldmember123 (Aug 18, 2020)

Hello people i seen on U-tube about using Vinegar and salt to remove the gold foils off off the gold fingers of motherboards and i have about 10 pounds of them i scraped myself ! Is there any downsides to using this technique ?


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## goldenchild (Aug 19, 2020)

It will take forever.


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## butcher (Aug 19, 2020)

What are your plans for the disposing of the toxic waste and poisonous solutions from this process?

Do you believe this is any safer than other methods using hydrogen halide leach?

Why? 

What benefits do you expect from a sodium acetate and hydrogen halide leach and sodium chloride in a mess of toxic base metals salts like the sweet-tasting lead acetate, other metals salts in solution copper cadmium cobalt tin or any other of the heavy metals involved in with this organic hazardous carbon-based acidic solutions?

Organic is not always better than inorganic chemistry and it is not necessarily any safer and can at times cause other complications were dealing with the different metal salts...

Why complicate an already simple process with vinegar and sodium chloride, when you can just use hydrogen chloride instead of attempting to make a weak HCl in situ in a solution of carbon-based acetates?


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## rickbb (Aug 19, 2020)

Sometimes YouTube is more appropriately called useless tube.

As butcher said, vinegar + salt = dilute hydrochloric acid, (HCL). Why make your own when it's cheap and sold almost every where swimming pools supplies and masonry supplies are sold.

Do yourself a big favor and search this forum for a process called AP and HCL + bleach for gold plated foils. 

And forget about that video and most of the others posted there. A few of our members put up videos there and are quite useful. Most of the rest of YouTube are wrong and just dangerous. 

PS. I can't imagine how long it took and how tedious a task it must have been to "scrape" 10 pounds of foils. After you see how easy it is to use AP you'll kick yourself.


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## Atomsmsh317 (Nov 5, 2020)

You guys take it easy and I believe it's acetic not hydrochloric :lol:


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## kurtak (Nov 6, 2020)

Atomsmsh317 said:


> You guys take it easy and I believe it's acetic not hydrochloric :lol:



Yes vinegar is acetic acid - however - when you add sodium chloride (table salt) to vinegar it produces a VERY WEAK hydrochloric acid due to the chloride in the salt --- its called chemistry - wherein there is a chemical change to the ingredients

like if you add sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to hydrochloric acid (HCl) to neutralize the acid to a Ph of 7 you end up with salt water --- NaOH + HCL goes to NaCl (table salt) + H2O = salt water --- evaporate the water off & you end up with table salt

that's way you can make nitric acid by adding potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate to sulfuric acid

it's called chemistry = changing the chemical make up of different ingredients - depending on the ingredients you mix (&/or the condition you mix them under) 

So if you add salt to vinegar the acetic goes to acetate + (a VERY SMALL amount) HCl --- the HCl is what cleans copper pennies (dissolves the copper oxide on the surface of the pennies)

Edit to add; - which is why we tell people that using salt plus vinegar to dissolve metals - DOES NOT make it safe --- when the metals are dissolved in the salt/vinegar you end up with a "toxic" solution that has metals dissolved in it --- the salt & vinegar may not be toxic - but when you dissolve metals with it - it becomes "toxic"

:shock: :shock: :shock: 

Kurt


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