# How Many People Refining Right Now!



## Thomascorley (Jun 26, 2013)

If not considered to rude, I would like to ask the question.

How many of folks are actually refining right now? I have been refining intensively this week (after work) I wondered, what were other people mostly refining? I've bee processing Fibre/ceramic CPUs I also got my hand on a 2.6g 18k gold ring. 
I've been collecting old mobile phones, Some of the boards look very pretty indeed. That being said I've heard the yield is pretty low. Which I find it difficult to believe given that some are gold plated front and back, some times the whole fibre board appears to be covered.

As the saying goes, "if some thing looks to good to be........" 

Thanks for reading.


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## Geo (Jun 26, 2013)

what have i been refining? humm, what you got? i process anything i find that has gold in it. electronics, ceramics, jewelry, gold plate. heck, ive even dabbled in floor and bench sweeps.


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## everydayisalesson (Jun 27, 2013)

Not refining yet, still studying. I have been staying busy sorting material. MLCCs, fingers, CPUs, memory, pins, and even floor sweeps as this stuff tends to fly all over the place at times. I depopulate all of my boards in one location though as to not spread it all over the house...Mike


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## solar_plasma (Jun 27, 2013)

active processes: 
CuSO4-cell (inspirated by thum cell, moebius cell and others) on silver plated, 
ferric chloride on 200g TO-5 transistors and 140 whole ram pcb's without components, -I had some kg of ferric chloride and no use for it, I will recover CuCl for reuse after butcher's method
A/Cl on incinerated and prepared flatpacks etc. (1,3kg) with some old cutted goldfingers, that had some cemented gold on them still
AP on Ag/Cu sludge, - clean and reused - H2SO4/peroxide works better, but dangerous and AP is an easy drop and forget method
H2SO4 on Cu/traces of Ag sludge - reused for electrolyte


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## g_axelsson (Jun 27, 2013)

If something looks too good to be true.... it's probably just flash plated. :mrgreen: 

I'm lazily refining MLCC:s (one jar leaching with nitric, one leaching tin from the next batch), some pins in AP, some dental material in AR (really nice orange color on the solution), one jar with silver and palladium cementing from a failed experiment, one jar with PGM cementing with zinc, one jar with silver scrap and nitric, one jar with AR treating some black powder from a failed electrolysis experiment (... I managed to dissolve some gold and silver in sulfuric acid and got a black mud) and one jar with some black mass of an unknown metal blob in an unknown solution (trying to find out and recover from a mess I did ten years ago).
And waiting for the weekend I have a jar with ceramic CPU:s and chips that I treated with AR in a first round to remove base metals. Anything with gold still on it will go into AR again with all the solids and cemented gold and the cleaned parts will just be sorted out.

As you can see I have quite a lot of different processes but as I'm running most of them without any heat it could take quite some time to finish. I just go outside and check what's ready to process and do that. Something I have learned is patience, but that's all right my only customer, me, is okay with that. 8) 

So in a sense... I'm always slowly refining something.

Göran


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## Drimacus (Jun 27, 2013)

Still making small silver bars about 30 ozt each, but rather discouraged at the current low price of silver.


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## AUH-R (Jun 27, 2013)

I have 21 486 lids soaking in some hcl. An ar solution from 31 black fibre cpu currently cementing out au with some copper bars.


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## Marcel (Jun 28, 2013)

1. Working on appr. 3 Kg MLCCs, still trying to improove all the steps to get the silver sorted from the Pd, effectively. The refinery has refused to buy my material since they dont want to deal with the seperation by themselfs...That costs me sleepless nights.

2. Testing 100g dental material. New challenge for me.


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## Thomascorley (Jun 28, 2013)

Reading that a few of you guys are getting hold of dental scraps...... Is it a case of a trip down to the dentist? Or is it possible to get them on-line ?

Thanks for the responses peeps, So looks like a lot of us are in the same boat. I've just finished the first of batch of ceramic CPU's around a kilo of them. (I just finished the first precipitation cylce this morning.) 
Tonight I'll be to running them through the AR again. Just hope my little tiny pile of gold doesn't get too much smaller! :lol: Will have to post some picture after tonight's refining session.


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## jimdoc (Jun 28, 2013)

Thomascorley said:


> Reading that a few of you guys are getting hold of dental scraps...... Is it a case of a trip down to the dentist? Or is it possible to get them on-line ?
> 
> Thanks for the responses peeps, So looks like a lot of us are in the same boat. I've just finished the first of batch of ceramic CPU's around a kilo of them. (I just finished the first precipitation cylce this morning.)
> Tonight I'll be to running them through the AR again. Just hope my little tiny pile of gold doesn't get too much smaller! :lol: Will have to post some picture after tonight's refining session.



Dental scraps are tricky. Do your homework on them with the search box. Every Ebay seller calls their dental scrap platinum, palladium and gold, when it is usually junk.

Jim


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## Thomascorley (Jun 29, 2013)

Jim,

Thanks for the heads up. Will be doing lots of home work before investing more pennies in scrap. Just had a pretty disturbing result from a 2.6g gold ring with a 18k stamp on.. Not a lot left after precipitating. Cant offer any suggestions on what the powder weighs, its still going through the washing process.

Cheers Jim


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## ctgresale (Jun 30, 2013)

having 8lbs of 16pin, 18pin, 22pin and 40pin purple ceramic Au top DIP + a few misc ceramic CPU's being processed, Love getting mr. purple chaged to :mrgreen: !


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## glondor (Jun 30, 2013)

Thomascorley said:


> Jim,
> 
> Thanks for the heads up. Will be doing lots of home work before investing more pennies in scrap. Just had a pretty disturbing result from a 2.6g gold ring with a 18k stamp on.. Not a lot left after precipitating. Cant offer any suggestions on what the powder weighs, its still going through the washing process.
> 
> Cheers Jim





Was it stamped 18k EP or 18k RG or perhaps 18 k gf ?


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## Thomascorley (Jun 30, 2013)

Glondor,
Just a guess but does:

The following mean,

EP- Electroplated?
RG- Rolled gold?
GF -Gold Foil?

Their some of the terms I have discovered of recent. I'm afraid we will never know what it may have said after 18k, I don't recall see anything else other than the 18k. I did test it with a neodymium magnet and it never even flinched. The magnets were pretty strong given that they were attracted to very small amounts of iron pyrites formations, found in Star Galaxy a type of granite commonly used in my work place, despite being horribly expensive. 

Cheers.


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## FrugalRefiner (Jun 30, 2013)

GF would be gold-filled.

Another to watch for is HGE - Heavy Gold Electroplate.

Dave


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## lazersteve (Jun 30, 2013)

Refining 8 days a week, only stopping to eat, sleep, and take care of life's other requirements. 

Steve


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## samuel-a (Jul 1, 2013)

Refining all the time...
But sometimes just recovering... 

Currently running:
12lb fingers batch.
Two 5 gal. drums of silver ink.


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## niteliteone (Jul 1, 2013)

Just sitting around trying to avoid the unnecessarily HOT days here in central California plucking the tops of Gold Filled watchbands I have spent the last 6 months collecting for these ugly days.
I started with approximately 25 Lbs last Friday and have about the same left to go. These things get boring real fast.


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## Geo (Jul 2, 2013)

ive been doing something different. i have a couple of oxygen concentrator's i picked up in scrap. one works great and the other IS scrap. the unit that works good has been employed in my AP operation. at first i was worried about supplying pure oxygen to AP for fear of dissolving gold. i placed a bubble stone on the line and have been adding a half pound of good quality pins per day and filtering the loose foils out using a piece of linen. it dissolves that much copper in 24 hours and could be doing in a lot less time than that. ive been doing that and have run about ten pounds of pins through the same solution and its still emerald green. if if take the O2 out for an hour or so, the liquid starts to darken. i let the solution settle today and filtered the whole bucket through coffee filters to get the dust that makes it through the linen. it was a nice return. if i can get one of these walmart cameras to work right, ill make a short clip and post it from youtube.


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## Palladium (Jul 2, 2013)

I'm actually taking it easy right now. The market is down and their are effects felt all the way across the board. My clients have slowed their shipments up by about 25% i would say in most cases. Not the volume size of the lot but the time it requires to amass that same size volume. For me that means instead of doing say 22- 30 lb lots for a customer in a year i would only do 18 lots of the same size. So revenue suffers. I have added a couple of new clients so that helps off set some of it. Given not only the volume is down but take into account the price of gold is down on that X amount of volume drop and numbers start to add up! People aren't selling as much scrap gold because the price is down. I just wonder how people like NTR are doing. :mrgreen: 

I been taking the down time to sort of take a break and try and reformulate, analyze, and plot a future course for business development and marketing strategies. Your business model should never be set in stone. Those that adapt, survive!


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## solar_plasma (Jul 2, 2013)

> ferric chloride on 200g TO-5 transistors and 140 whole ram pcb's without components, -I had some kg of ferric chloride and no use for it, I will recover CuCl for reuse after butcher's method



Those are a real pleasure. Very thick, heavy goldplating from the inside. Seems to be even thicker than household aluminium foil! Got a very promising dark-violett SnCl2 reaction already from a very weak AP (HCl alone got no colour), which I wanted to use for a fast rinsing. But the solution got after an hour only dark yellow, so I dropped this rinsing step and added clorox. After hours I could not see the foils got attacked very much, so I let the Cl bubble off over night and today I added every hour 1 ml HNO3 65% (3ml at all, I guessed the gold to be at least 3g, - 0,5-1g ram foils, 2,5g TO-5 plating and maybe goldsolder from under the die). I give it a little heat by a poor man's steam bath (changing boiling water from time to time) and stir by bubbling air through a glas pipe.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 2, 2013)

And that's my little highlight today. 500 ml gold chloride solution. I added a little H2SO4, though I don't believe there should be any lead in it after all the washes, but who knows. Now, I let it sit over night.


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## Thomascorley (Jul 3, 2013)

niteliteone said:


> Just sitting around trying to avoid the unnecessarily HOT days here in central California plucking the tops of Gold Filled watchbands I have spent the last 6 months collecting for these ugly days.
> I started with approximately 25 Lbs last Friday and have about the same left to go. These things get boring real fast.



Not a huge fan of hot, oven like summer days. Luckily in the UK you need never worry about such things. All you need is a rain coat and a pair of day glow glasse's! 

Not wanting to sound too stupid for asking this question but what does "plucking the tops of Gold Filled watchbands " mean? Any thing to do with wrist watch straps?

Cheers


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## Thomascorley (Jul 3, 2013)

Palladium said:


> I'm actually taking it easy right now. The market is down and their are effects felt all the way across the board. My clients have slowed their shipments up by about 25% i would say in most cases. Not the volume size of the lot but the time it requires to amass that same size volume. For me that means instead of doing say 22- 30 lb lots for a customer in a year i would only do 18 lots of the same size. So revenue suffers. I have added a couple of new clients so that helps off set some of it. Given not only the volume is down but take into account the price of gold is down on that X amount of volume drop and numbers start to add up! People aren't selling as much scrap gold because the price is down. I just wonder how people like NTR are doing. :mrgreen:
> 
> I been taking the down time to sort of take a break and try and reformulate, analyze, and plot a future course for business development and marketing strategies. Your business model should never be set in stone. Those that adapt, survive!




Sounds like your taking quite a commercial approach, Is it paying off? Have you ever struck the mother load? What sort of market strategies do intend to take? Sorry about the quick-fire questions. Just intrigued to know how your getting on 

Cheers


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## Thomascorley (Jul 3, 2013)

Not being to accustomed to on-line forum etiquette , I felt a little rude not replying to everyone posts, being as I started the thread. 

Thanks every one for sharing!

Now going to be spending the rest of the evening with my new VOX Vt40! 

Cheers


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## solar_plasma (Jul 3, 2013)

I'm just watching my gold precipitate. Fantastic such a clean solution, since it is so much more visible, what happens in there. My last one (from glucose strips)was also clean, but it was very little gold in there. And my first precipitation was made from ceramic cpu's before I knew this forum, so that was a very dirty one. Today I started, although there was still a very slight smell of chlorine. Since I know now, how to handle it properly, if it would not precipitate, I gave it a try. It took an hour, but now it's a light brown or ocher, milky solution and the particles start to agglomerate and slowly sink. The clear upper phase seems still yellow as expected, because I only added about 2 g of potassium metabisulfite (used dry, no fizzing). The slight smell of chlorine seems to be gone.

No fast super precipitation, but the color is very satisfying for a "recovery".  ....LOVE IT!

Without the forum I would definately not have been able to process those TO-5 transistors. I guess I would have aqua-regia-nuked them without removing the base metals :lol: Thank you all!


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## niteliteone (Jul 4, 2013)

Thomascorley said:


> (snip)
> Not wanting to sound too stupid for asking this question but what does "plucking the tops of Gold Filled watchbands " mean? Any thing to do with wrist watch straps?
> 
> Cheers



The question is only stupid if you fail to ask it, especially if you don't yet know what is being talked about. So I will try to explain.
I am dealing with a "Low Grade" of jewelery that most people refuse to buy for PM recovery, but many long term members here know it is a good source of Values if you learn how to work with the required steps to do this efficiently.
Most Gold Filled items are a layer of karat gold usually between 10K to 14K adhered to a base metal, In the case of watch bands it is usually Stainless Steel as the base and the gold caps are crimped on and just need to be picked off. thus removing approximately 65% of the base metals contained in the item.

I think the pictures will explain better.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 5, 2013)

> Without the forum I would definately not have been able to process those TO-5 transistors.



1,1 g gold....I guess there are some 0,1 g left back in the ferric chloride solution and I have to check the solution from precipitation after I bubbled the excess SO2 off.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 5, 2013)

Just a question to the experienced: Can you tell me by the color, if it is clean enough to be melted without flux. Well, I want to refine it first together with some gramms unrefined gold and then do the Harold washes first. I am only curious.


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## 9kuuby9 (Jul 5, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> Just a question to the experienced: Can you tell me by the color, if it is clean enough to be melted without flux. Well, I want to refine it first together with some gramms unrefined gold and then do the Harold washes first. I am only curious.



The lighter the powder the better; I'd say this one has an average color; the darker the color the more drag down you have their.


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## modtheworld44 (Jul 5, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> > Without the forum I would definately not have been able to process those TO-5 transistors.
> 
> 
> 
> 1,1 g gold....I guess there are some 0,1 g left back in the ferric chloride solution and I have to check the solution from precipitation after I bubbled the excess SO2 off.


solar_plasma

Just curious to know if,your using the ferric chloride hot or if your using it at just outside temperature.Can you use stannous chloride to test it for gold or will the iron give a false test.The reason I even ask,is because I use ferric chloride for my gold fingers and have come up short on my yields.So because of this post I went and tested my ferric chloride solution with stannous chloride and it turned clear.So thats why I'm asking the above questions.Thanks in advance.



modtheworld44


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## solar_plasma (Jul 5, 2013)

> Just curious to know if,your using the ferric chloride hot or if your using it at just outside temperature.Can you use stannous chloride to test it for gold or will the iron give a false test.The reason I even ask,is because I use ferric chloride for my gold fingers and have come up short on my yields.So because of this post I went and tested my ferric chloride solution with stannous chloride and it turned clear.So thats why I'm asking the above questions.Thanks in advance.



Interesting question. I will check it this evening. I used an aquarium heating device and held it at 30-40 degr C and an aquarium membrane airpump for stirring but the air came from inside at 22 degrC, - bucket outside.


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## modtheworld44 (Jul 5, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> > Just curious to know if,your using the ferric chloride hot or if your using it at just outside temperature.Can you use stannous chloride to test it for gold or will the iron give a false test.The reason I even ask,is because I use ferric chloride for my gold fingers and have come up short on my yields.So because of this post I went and tested my ferric chloride solution with stannous chloride and it turned clear.So thats why I'm asking the above questions.Thanks in advance.
> 
> 
> 
> Interesting question. I will check it this evening. I used an aquarium heating device and held it at 30-40 degr C and an aquarium membrane airpump for stirring but the air came from inside at 22 degrC, - bucket outside.



solar_plasma

When you do the stannous test on your ferric chloride use a white or clear plastic spoon and about a dime size amount of ferric chloride then add stannous until you get full color change.Let it sit for about 10 minutes then look very closely at it under daylight or very bright light and see what you get.

Second Test

Take any au solution do normal stannous test(use plastic spoon again) wait for purple to settle decant down,then let purple dry in spoon.When dry take pregnant ferric chloride and add that to spoon with dried purple and then add stannous until you get full color change.Let it sit for 10 minutes then look at the dried purple spot under light(make light reflect off purple spot back and forth movement.Tell me what you see. Thanks in advance.



modtheworld44


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## solar_plasma (Jul 5, 2013)

Ay, good Sir!

Have just first to go with my cute gal on a goth party tonight. 8)


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## modtheworld44 (Jul 5, 2013)

solar_plasma said:


> Ay, good Sir!
> 
> Have just first to go with my cute gal on a goth party tonight. 8)



solar_plasma

Take your time I read all posts anyways so I shouldn't miss your response.The party sounds like great fun so have some for me too.LOL :mrgreen: 



modtheworld44


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## solar_plasma (Jul 13, 2013)

> solar_plasma
> 
> When you do the stannous test on your ferric chloride use a white or clear plastic spoon and about a dime size amount of ferric chloride then add stannous until you get full color change.Let it sit for about 10 minutes then look very closely at it under daylight or very bright light and see what you get.
> 
> ...



first test done

edit: 20 min. later nr.1 and 4 (from the left) became water clear with a black, heavy precipitate at the ground / nr.3 got same black precipitate, but stayed in having a brown-purple color

edit 2: and yes, what looks like a fly sh.t in nr.2, is black precipitate - I tried it once more, the green color disappears and black precipitate comes

edit 3: nr.2 has still a very slight green color


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## Geo (Jul 13, 2013)

both the AR test look positive for PM's, though you need to find out which it is. what did the stain look like? Harold has taught that the actual color of the tested solution is not as important as the stain left behind. a purple stain is a positive for gold. rinse the test spots with water only and and try to determine the color of the stain left behind.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 13, 2013)

I did what you said and the stain seems not to have any color other than black. I look again tomorrow in the sunlight. Both where negative yesterday. Today most of the visible gold foils in nr.4 were dissolved. I have to mention, that both solutions are green, though not as dark as dirty AR from ceramic cpu's when the base metals aren't removed.

1% DMG in alcohol (still have no other, but it reacts strongly on a small probe of mlcc's - so it should work) was negative. I don't expect other PMs than gold from the material. When I have filtered, I thought of testing the sediments from nr.1/flatpack ashes for silver with Schwerter's solution.

I did both batches with only HCl 25% and 2ml HNO3 65% and without heat, so I expected, it would take some days. I started both at the same time, so I could use the visible gold foils in nr.4 as an indicator for when the process may be complete for both.


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## Palladium (Jul 13, 2013)

Geo said:


> both the AR test look positive for PM's, though you need to find out which it is. what did the stain look like? Harold has taught that the actual color of the tested solution is not as important as the stain left behind. a purple stain is a positive for gold. rinse the test spots with water only and and try to determine the color of the stain left behind.



Another trade secret and great piece of advice!


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## Geo (Jul 13, 2013)

Jeff bows "thank you , thank you , ill be here all week".


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## MEANIE (Jul 13, 2013)

I have pins in AP and building a cell..
Oh its warm here 108°F or about 43°c..
so I am trying to stay cool ..

Todd


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## Woodworker1997 (Jul 14, 2013)

MEANIE said:


> I have pins in AP and building a cell..
> Oh its warm here 108°F or about 43°c..
> so I am trying to stay cool ..
> 
> Todd



108!!! Almost no need for a hot plate!

Derek


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## Ian_B (Jul 19, 2013)

Currently running a small 175g gold filled batch of mixed eyeglass frames, pocket watch cases and other small stamped GF'd items 

currently in the Research and Development stage of the 95/5 silver plated immersion method


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## solar_plasma (Jul 20, 2013)

First results from the last weeks:

(ferric chloride, then AC)
200g TO-5 transistors 
foils from 1,2 kg RAM pcb
foils from 10 pieces cell phone pcb and 1 touchpad

(AR)
1,2 kg ic/flatpacks/few n/s-bridges

*at all 3,7 g gold* (1,1g from ferric and 2,6 g from AR) *EDIT: or 2,38 dwt*

(there will still be some traces in the ferric bucket and in the flatpack sand, I assume, which has to be checked)

Thank you all!

Active process: an evil blend of pins (1,2kg) from the time I didn't know, they should be sorted  though I worked some times succesful with the sulfuric cell before, but since those different pins would have stripped very unequally, I wanted to give it a try with my used ferric chloride and changed over to used and contaminated AP. When I changed, I separated some floating foils and black powders, which I believe could contain cemented gold. After about 2 weeks there is only about half of the basemetal left.


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## rickbb (Jul 21, 2013)

Yes, have a small karat batch in AR and 500g of e-scrap in AP.


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## Geo (Jul 21, 2013)

i have totally messed up a small batch of chips. my son and i had put together a small forge type incinerator from brick. i had a two gallon bucket level full of mixed chips that needed to be separated as it contained plastic and ceramic chips. and i told my son that after we got it built, we could try it out with those chips. that night, he decided to help me out and try the incinerator out and run some chips. he poured the whole bucket in and fired it up. i blame myself for not explaining that i still had to sort and prepare them before they were incinerated. more than half were ceramic. he said that everything was glowing white hot when he turned it off. it was a mess too bad to describe. melted iron legs and glass had fused together and was like a shellac that coated most of the contents of the incinerator.it was like all the material was super glued together. im sure i will have to store this one until i build a mill.


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## ovidiuanghel (Jul 21, 2013)

I finish this ceramic chips today, 1.78 gold and 0.4 silver, first i soak the chips in nitric to get rid of the kovar lids, then i cement the silver from solution and the gold foils dissolve in AR

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/62/z1ta.jpg/


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## solar_plasma (Jul 21, 2013)

> it was a mess too bad to describe. melted iron legs and glass had fused together and was like a shellac that coated most of the contents of the incinerator.it was like all the material was super glued together. im sure i will have to store this one until i build a mill.



Holy cow!

Today, I dropped a funnel full of HCl, gold foils and CuCl...first time this happened to me, just a fast movement and *splat!* those are the hardly avoidable moments one feels to (edit: too) save  - lucky me, I had a plastic box beneath and could easily wash everything together with some dust and dirt back in the funnel.


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## Smack (Jul 21, 2013)

Geo said:


> i have totally messed up a small batch of chips. my son and i had put together a small forge type incinerator from brick. i had a two gallon bucket level full of mixed chips that needed to be separated as it contained plastic and ceramic chips. and i told my son that after we got it built, we could try it out with those chips. that night, he decided to help me out and try the incinerator out and run some chips. he poured the whole bucket in and fired it up. i blame myself for not explaining that i still had to sort and prepare them before they were incinerated. more than half were ceramic. he said that everything was glowing white hot when he turned it off. it was a mess too bad to describe. melted iron legs and glass had fused together and was like a shellac that coated most of the contents of the incinerator.it was like all the material was super glued together. im sure i will have to store this one until i build a mill.



Geo, I can run it in my ball mill for you if you want, I'm still waiting for my counter top so I can't process anything right now but the ball mill is open. Just working on concrete at the shop right now. PM me if you want.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 25, 2013)

Today I finished my 1,2 kg blended pins....what at first looked like 5 g (couldn't believe that), then after precipitation looked like 1g (this I could believe), turned out to be 0,3g after drying (hard to believe). The solutions are tested almost barren. Somewhat disappointing... :roll:

I guess the reason for the low yield was, that I had a lot of whole pci slot pins in it, which where only slightly plated at the end.

edit: I had used ACl and to be on the safe side, I have used AR on the solids for a second run, without heat. When I tested some hours ago, it gave a very slight positive (edit: the SnCl2 that worked fine yesterday, now showed a weak reaction on gold standard solution). Now, diluted, SMB and voilà immediately fine dark precipitate. I don't dare anymore to guess how much it is before I weighed it, but only 0,1g would make 25% of the whole yield  Then I tested some dried grey-white precipitate in one of the first filters (I assume, depending on my process, mostly lead sulfate) and it turned immediately out to show positive for gold, so there are maybe also some mg gold hidden. Whithout the forum I would never have known where and how to search! I must say, I had blundered a bit, when I didn't incinerate the powders I filtered from the dirty AP before HCl wash. And in my mind, I heard Harolds words:


> You'd do yourself a world of good to learn to incinerate things.


 ...


> When you process materials recovered from a stock pot, begin with incineration, then follow up with a hard boil in HCl and careful rinsing.


 ...


> I wonder---when will you guys start using incineration? It's a critical part of refining.


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## solar_plasma (Aug 9, 2013)

> Today I finished my 1,2 kg blended pins....what at first looked like 5 g (couldn't believe that), then after precipitation looked like 1g (this I could believe), turned out to be 0,3g after drying (hard to believe). The solutions are tested almost barren. Somewhat disappointing... :roll:



Sediments from pins/AP plus the second run of my first batch 1,2kg flatpacks (both solutions were gold positive) I got 1g gold.

So, that has been my summer holidays:

1,2kg flatpacks 
1,2 kg pins
200g TO-5 transistors
foils from 1,2 kg RAM pcb
foils from 10 pieces cell phone pcb and 1 touchpad

gave 5,0g gold

And I learned something new today: Never use bamboo sticks for stirring in CuCl2 if a lot of Fe++ is present! The tannin agents make good old black ink...should have known better :roll:


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## Geo (Aug 9, 2013)

i hope you keep all on your consumables for incineration and processing.


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## solar_plasma (Aug 9, 2013)

Yes, I filtered the processed material together with the obviously insoluble ink off and incinerated to red glowing. The CuCl2 solution looks good again. Just missed one day of processing by that mistake so far.


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## solar_plasma (Oct 12, 2013)

Just made a first aquaintance experiment on a little piece of a honey comb, which I got for free and got a fine orange stannous test. Now I hunted after some cats and honey combs on ebay: It's a tragedy! The bigger boys run at such low margins....no chance for hobbyists. :roll:


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## rickbb (Oct 27, 2013)

Currently running some x-ray film in caustic soda. It's slow in a 5 gallon bucket. sigh.


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## yar (Oct 28, 2013)

18 ounces of close cut ram fingers in AP, dropping copper out of a spent AP solution, and setting up a scrap grill I found to use to heat a sand bath to depopulate cellphone boards(thanks to geos' videos).


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## grance (Oct 28, 2013)

Always like ten different things going on around here. 2 ap tanks running pretty much nonstop. Runing the sulfuric cell about 4 hours a day. Sitin at the work bench about the same. Burt off 2 pounds of flat packs saturday going to treat the ash today some time. Then clean and dissolve my foils I have stored up. Hopfuly do a drop and melt by thursday. Also got a bunch of keyboard mylars and mlccs to deal with if I deside to do them my self.


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## solar_plasma (Nov 27, 2013)

Today I cemented 0.8g platinum black from my first AR run on the broken 1,6kg honey comb, which I got as a present. It was only from the liquid I poured off. The water in which I stored the treated comb has the same colour as the AR before, so there will be some O,1gramms still in it. For the next run I will use simple HCl/chlorox.

By the way, the material turned out to be highly contaminated with rust. To get rid of this would surely have served the process.

Something interesting occured: I added zinc pieces for cementation and the day after I had a light brown gelatinous sludge and ocre coloured sediment. At first I thought that I had to dry the mess, incinerate and start once again, but then I found out, that adding strong HCl made the whole mess dissolve again and I had a clear green solution again.Now, the cementation started again and after dissolving the zinc pieces I had the very fine powdered 0,8g platinum black on the bottom.

I assumed that the pH had went to high, though still acidic. The brown colour may have been iron hydoxides and the gelatinous liquid must have been some other hydroxides or complexes? I would not have believed, that hydroxides could form in acidic solution without adding some alkaline hydroxides.


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## jonn (Nov 27, 2013)

Hi solarplasma, zinc will precipitate iron, hcl will digest iron. I hope that clarifies your reaction. Jonn


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## butcher (Nov 27, 2013)

We can remove hydrogen with reactions metals from our acid solutions, metals above hydrogen in the reactivity series of metals, basically making salts of these metals and former acid, without hydrogen our solution can get closer to neutral (somewhat depending on metals involved)or even hydroxide, if iron is in these solutions heating them can form iron hydroxides (rust, red rouge) insoluble in acids.

Some metals very high in the reactivity series will form hydroxide salts with an reaction with just water alone.


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## solar_plasma (Nov 29, 2013)

Thank you guys.


> Today I cemented 0.8g platinum black from my first AR run on the broken 1,6kg honey comb, which I got as a present. It was only from the liquid I poured off. The water in which I stored the treated comb has the same colour as the AR before, so there will be some O,1gramms still in it.



All in all 2,0g from the first leaching now! 8)


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## solar_plasma (Apr 28, 2014)

Though I used AP many, many a time succesfully, today it was just as if the copper-chloride-system started to talk to me or better I started to understand, what it told me. It's like a dog, you know, when he is hungry, needs to go for a walk, wants to play... just wanted to share this phantastic feeling with you. Thank you all!


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## Dellrugby (May 27, 2014)

Hey, I am new, and I am NOT refining. I am on here so I can learn how, and I really appreciate all that everyone offers in terms of knowledge. Thanks to all of you for your help. I can't wait to show my own buttons I make. For now, I have a guy at the local Gold Souk making my buttons for me for about 3 dollars.


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## butcher (May 27, 2014)

I had to look up what a gold souk was I never heard of that term used.


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## artart47 (May 27, 2014)

Hi !
Up untill now, I was constantly recovering something and/or preparing a batch of recovered gold for refining, but, I just bought another home and have a monumental task of puting it back in shape, getting our stuff ready to move and a full-time job.
I've had no time to do my gold thing! I've been collecting, a new stack of computors, a large searver, two pounds of fingers ready and a stock-pot that I'll try to get to soon. I need to get skeletal operations set up at my new shop before I'll be in full swing.
artart47


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## rickbb (May 29, 2014)

Well, right now I'm at my day job, but at home I have a batch of AP bubbling away. Which I guess means I'm refining "right now". :lol:


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