# Refining Gold with Borax... Missing a step asking for CLARITY.



## Summeruv67 (Jul 21, 2016)

I am new to the gold refining process and all research I did stated and demonstrated the process of crushing, and running gold flour down the sluice over felt carpet, using soap to weigh down gold and panning it into plastic, adding equal amount of borax. Prepare clay with borax by melting it onto clay bowl which also glazes the bowl to prevent cracking or loss of gold if pot does crack. 
Not once did I hear, read, or see any demo using any other product or Chemical and my result was black and fragile pieces of nothing. And not for lack of gold I assure all. 
I have been at it seven months and finally at stage of refining my finds and this is the result.
Please, without insulting, can someone tell me, what I am missing in this process.? 
Flux? I under stood Borax as Flux. If not... what Flux do I need to use with Borax process to separate dirty gold from ore? 
Apparently, what appeared as clear and concise instruction was far from it and I am in dire need of Truth; clear, concise, effective, instruction that yields successful results. My humble appreciation for reading this and all help given in advance. 
A little personal history. A 1000 mile bicycle ride up California coast led me to great finds that I kept with me. When landed in Oregon, husband found a job (something impossible to find in California for either of us). Temporary or long term, he took the job. Seven months later I finally find a job. He got laid off. It is Time to refine this gold to help us stay above water and I get bunk information as far as I can tell. We really have no time to waste and no more to lose. 
Any clear answers and be appreciated and pray fully soon and the most economical possible. 
I appreciate your kindness and Blessings to all of Us.


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## nickvc (Jul 21, 2016)

I do not wish to sound harsh or to talk down to you but how do you know you have gold ?
Extracting gold from ore is a difficult proposition unless you know what you are doing, ores can and most often do contain very toxic elements such as arsenic which can be volatized by heat or using acids.
It may help if you post some pictures of what you have, maybe someone will be able to give some advise.
The one piece of advice I will give is to have an assay done to find out exactly what you have in the mix.
Sometimes even with gold in ore it's not economic to recover it because of the problems caused by other elements.
The sad fact is that yours is not the first or likely to be the last about so called gold ore and few turn out to be worth the effort or risk to health to recover.


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## 4metals (Jul 21, 2016)

A few points which I got from your description of your trip.



> A 1000 mile bicycle ride up California coast led me to great finds that I kept with me.



From this I assume that what you gathered is likely a few pounds of promising looking nuggets? I doubt it is a substantial quantity of ore because the transporting 1000 miles on a bicycle leads me to think otherwise. Without seeing your actual finds, the first thing that comes to mind is placer gold nuggets. The trouble is if that is what you found, the crushing will have only flattened out the gold as it is quite malleable and does not easily crush to powder. So you would have seen flattened yellow flakes after crushing. Typically placer nuggets look like this, although this is a rather large sample. 




The other option may have been you picked up iron pyrite. The first time I ever saw iron pyrite in the field was in the '80's in Ecuador and seeing it in a vein or a chunk in a river wash truly makes your heart thump. This is what iron pyrite looks like.




While this material will crush up and separate out the heavier fractions as you described, unfortunately it has no value. 

As Nick stated, some good close up pictures posted may be your least costly option, ideally a picture before you started the crushing and screening process would be most helpful.

One point you made in your post is a little troubling to me and I would like to comment on it.



> Please,* without insulting*, can someone tell me, what I am missing in this process.?



I would like to assure Summer as well as any other members reading this that this forum has started down a new path, and *all members posting clear and intelligent questions will not be belittled or told to go home and read. * I fear this approach has chased a good number of prospective members from the forum as an unintended consequence of that behavior. While I feel it is a good idea to read and be informed of the processes described on this forum, any well thought out requests made to this forum deserve an answer not an insult. 

So please, post whatever photo's you may have and let us try to help you resolve this situation.


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## rickbb (Jul 22, 2016)

Sounds like you used entirely too much borax, common beginner thing to do. I did the same first time I used it to coat a melting dish. You only need a pinch. If you had gold, it's still there buried in the dark borax glass. So don't throw it out.

Refining with borax is a bit of a misnomer, using it on a concentrate is more of a recovery method. You won't get .999 gold that way, as in, "refined" gold.

It's a method that's promoted in 3rd world countries to try and get people to stop using mercury to recover gold from concentrates they pan from rivers.

If you do indeed have gold, you would be better off selling it as a concentrate than spending time and money on refining it. You can learn a lot, but will lose a lot of gold with mistakes, (as you have found out).


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