# 100 Ounces of pins



## tek4g63

I want to start by saying that this will be a real time post. By real time, I mean my real time. So it may take much longer than it would if I were able to stay on top of it. But as a lot of you know, life gets busy.

I have 100 ounces of pins. I believe these pins to be high grade. I felt this would be a good way to find out for sure if they are. 

I'm going to proces them using AP to recover the gold then HCL/CL to refine. 

I thought about just posting this after I finished, to share my data but then I got to thinking that I'm still very new at this and posting it in real time may give another member time to stop me from making a mistake. I hope that is acceptable.

The pictures below are my pins ready for a soak in AP. It has taken a very long time to get these, and I'm very excited to see how much gold they give me. 

Comments are welcome and encouraged! Thank you!


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## tek4g63

I had more time tonight than I thought I would so I went ahead and started the next step.

I put the pins in my reaction chamber (3.5 gal bucket). Added HCL, Peroxide, and a fish tank bubbler.

In the picture below you can see that the 1 galon of HCL that I used is most likely not going to be enough. I went ahead and got the reaction started and ill get another galon tomorrow. Sorry I didn't get a pic of after I added the peroxide, the fumes were rolling out pretty good and the breeze kept changing directions on me so I stired it all up, put the lid on and called it quits for the night.


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## maynman1751

If you have been reading and studying the forum, you probably know that AP is not the preferred way to go with pins and they look to be nice quality. It's going to take a lot of HCl and time to digest all of the base metals and leave you with a lot of waste, although the AP can be regenerated.
I'm thinking a sulfuric cell would be the way to go with this material, but I don't know your 'situation'. You can stop what you have started if you choose to go with a cell and drain off the acid and rinse and dry the pins until your cell is ready.
Just my thoughts on your post.


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## jmdlcar

Those pins look like they are from hard drive, cd-rom, floppy drive and motherboard ide/floppy/jumper if I'm right that took time to break off. They look good and clean. I will follow this cause I will do this some day.


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## tek4g63

Maynman, thank you for your advice. I had actually thought about building a cell and going that route untill I did more reasearch. At least 50% of these pins are "barrel type" similar to a female socket. The ID is so small that each of the pins would create a "cage" type of effect and the plating on the inside would not be stripped. So I would end up running the partally deplated pins in AP anyway. Plus, I prefer the AP process because of the "set it and forget it" ease. I know it uses more chemicles, but HCL is cheap and I'm set up to process AP waste to safely dispose of it.

This is a great example, in my opinion, for new members. Choose the process that best suits your needs. All have their up and down sides, but with a bit of reasearch and understanding of your life schedule, you will find what is best for you.


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## Geo

actually, if the pin is open on both ends it will strip the inside perfectly well. it just takes a little longer. ive ran the same type of pins many times. they had a stainless rod set on a spring. i had to pull each rod by hand but the cell did a good job on the inside with a good yield for pins that size and weight.


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## kurt

Cool -I just finished recovering the foils from 10 Lb of pins that I got from some telcom stuff which gave me a yeald of 34 grams of foils so about 3 grams per Lb. I use nitric simply because I get it for about $8 a gallon.

Kurt


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## glondor

Just a few pin foil photos. Inspiration for ya ! 8)


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## tek4g63

Glondor, thank you! That is inspiring! Looks like you used nitric, is that correct? I hope mine come that clean!


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## glondor

Yes, Nitric. Those are not washed yet. Still loads of tin and nickle in there, but they do look nice!! 8)


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## butcher

I would use my pickle jar and make nitric acid if I had that pile of pins, killing two birds with one stone. :lol:


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## gold4mike

More inspiration...


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## tek4g63

Thank you all for your great pictures. Keep them coming! 

In perpetration for refining the foils from this run I thought I should practice the hcl/cl process. I had 1.3 grams of foils from a small batch of these pins that I ran to learn the AP process. I dissolved them in hcl/cl with no hang ups. But after letting it sit uncovered for 24 hours to drive off the chlorine there is a white sediment in the bottom. Before I filter and add water in preparation for dropping the gold I would like to know what the sediment may be. These pins have never seen solder, so we can probably rule out tin. I can't imagine that it would be silver either. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?


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## kurt

Pins are made of brass - tin is used to make brass - when you dissolve the brass to recover the foils you still get the same tin paste as you get from solder (as well as other base metal salts) You need to do a oxidation roast &/or incineration to convert the tin paste (&/or other base metal salts) to an oxcide - then treat with hot HCL to remove the oxcides.

If you don't do the roast/incinerate to foils from pins before dissolving foils it will result in value loss as the tin paste cause's some of the gold to form as a colliod when you dissolve the foils.

The gold colliod does not settle out - it can't be filtered out & it wont show up on a stannous test --- it's just lost.

Do a search (incinerate foils) it has been talked about many time here on the forum (Harold has stressed the importance of it repeatedly)

Skipping the oxcidation roast/incineration step - followed by hot HCL treatment equals value lost.

Kurt


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## tek4g63

The pins I ran were beryllium copper, not brass.

Thank you for the good info though. I will keep that in mind when running unknown base metal pins.


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## etack

I used a store brand bleach and got a white precipitate once; it looked like AgCl but the gold was from foils so no Ag was present. It might also be Pb.

found this on beryllium copper
http://www.busbymetals.com/pdf/guide_to_be_cu.pdf 
it has some info on compositions of different alloys.
I would filter with a Charmin plug and go on.
Eric


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## kurt

Then you most likely have a copper salt - which still needs to be turned to an oxcide & eliminated befor dissolving the foils - which means doing an oxcidation roast/incineration.

Harold (& others including Hokes) has stressed the importance of this step over & over again (so don't take my word for it) Following Harolds wise instruction has made a huge difference in my end result.

Kurt


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## tek4g63

Thank you kurt. I understand. I meant no disrespect. I was only trying to give as much detail as I could in the short time I had to make that post.

I have read Hoke and I would trust Harold with my life not just my gold. He is a very wise man.

I am doing this as a hobby and although I have made a nice safe setup for the AP process and the use of HCL/CL, I am not currently set up for incineration. But if the white sediment is something that can only be avoided by incineration then I will have to expand my operation.

Thank you all for your help. All is progressing nicely with my 100 ounces of pings. If it keeps this pace it should be done in no more than 2 weeks.


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## butcher

White salts could be several things, silver chloride lead chloride (since your pins did not have solder most likely not these but I will discuss them, also it could just be simple table salt from the bleach in the reaction, 

Copper I chloride is also a white salt, But the solution would have been green loaded with copper not the nice yellow gold chloride solution in your picture, (so you do not have copper chloride here),

How do we test or separate these, well let us see.

Table salt NaCl is soluble in cold water, (lead chloride, silver chloride or copper chloride is not).

After separating the salt with cold water we can separate the lead chloride which is soluble in very hot water (silver chloride is not soluble in hot water but is fluffy and takes some time to settle so if we have silver we keep solution hot but let silver settle. when water soluble lead chloride has been decanted and cooled it will again form white lead chloride precipitant.

Copper I chloride will convert to soluble copper II chloride in HCl, and can also color solution blue to green even to brown depending on concentration, silver chloride is insoluble here.

Silver chloride will dissolve in ammonia (or household ammonium hydroxide),

----(Caution silver in this form is becomes a temperature or shock sensitive explosive if dried, so this solution will need acidified to precipitate out the silver and make solution safe), -----
Silver can be precipitated back out of this silver diammine solution by using an acid like Hydrochloric acid the silver will precipitate as white silver chloride powder, leaving a solution of ammonium chloride solution (if this solution is neutral pH, and not contaminated with other metals or solutions this solution can be filtered then crystallized and used as a reagent for precipitation of platinum).

My guess is you will find you have some salt NaCl white powder.

If solder is in the pins the incineration advice of foils is good advice, I personally would incinerate the pins before processing just to burn off the oils from them (to keep my solutions cleaner), if you have fire (torch, gas burner or very hot fire) and either corning casserole dish or stainless steel pan you have what you will need to incinerate, a charcoal fire and stainless pan would also work, not that much to incineration. 

You’re not dealing with solder so you may not have any trouble working without an incineration here.


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## tek4g63

Thank you butcher. That is exactly the answer I needed. I should have asked how to test the white sediment instead of asking what it might be. A wise man once said"if your not getting the right answer, maybe your asking the wrong question".

I also had ruled out copper I chloride due to the color of the solution. I have formed copper I chloride in AP before due to the solution being fully saturated. Plus if it had too much copper my gold would have precipitated out as a black powder long before forming copper I chloride, correct?

I will try all the tests you described this weekend when I filter the solution. I suspect, like you, that it is just salt.

Thank you again!

(Edited for typo. My phones auto correct in action)


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## jmdlcar

How is your pins doing in the AP? How many gallon of HCL have you added so far?


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## tek4g63

jmdlcar said:


> How is your pins doing in the AP? How many gallon of HCL have you added so far?



Thank you Jack for that question. I should have already posted that information. I can be scatter brained some times.

I'll start from the beginning.
* Day one
-100 ounces of gold plated pins.
- One gallon of hydrochloric acid. ( meratic acid 32% bought at lowes ).
- One cup of 2% hydrogen peroxide ( CVS store brand )
- One fish tank bubbler with a custom made bubbling stone at the end of the poly urethane house I use.

All of this was put in a 3.5 gallon bucket that I use as my reaction chamber.

I let it all sit undisturbed for 7 days.

* Day seven
- Added one more gallon of hydrochloric acid because the solution was looking very dark.

I stirred it well and noticed a bunch of beautiful gold foils floating around, that let me know all is going well.


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## tek4g63

I only check it on the weekends because I know there is no way to rush this process without introducing problems, plus a watched pot never boils.

I will update on the status this weekend. Thank you for your interest.

Butcher, you were correct! It was just salt in my HCL/CL. Thank you for your help!


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## Anonymous

tek4g63 said:


> I know there is no way to rush this process without introducing problems


If you could have found nitric,for a reasonable price,you could have had all of them done in about 2 hours.
I don't know what your situation is,but if you plan on running this volume again,you may want to find some nitric.Not only do you have your material finished in a fraction of the time,but you will use about half as much nitric,as you will Hcl.


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## jmdlcar

I found that 1 gal of HCL cost only $6.00 + tax but Nitric I found on eBay 1 pint for $39.99 + $10.00 shipping. So Nitric would cost a lot more beside it is a hobby for me and I have a lot of time for the HCL to work. Thanks Jack


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## tek4g63

jmdlcar said:


> I found that 1 gal of HCL cost only $6.00 + tax but Nitric I found on eBay 1 pint for $39.99 + $10.00 shipping. So Nitric would cost a lot more beside it is a hobby for me and I have a lot of time for the HCL to work. Thanks Jack



Well said Jack. that is my situation as well, although I would like to get some nitric acid one day just to experiment with. But thank you for posting your experience, because that's what I would like this post to be about. Not just me using the AP method but also the different ways pins can be handled.

So please anybody reading this that has pictures of how they process pins, and/or stories please share them here. Thank you


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## etack

tek4g63 said:


> jmdlcar said:
> 
> 
> 
> I found that 1 gal of HCL cost only $6.00 + tax but Nitric I found on eBay 1 pint for $39.99 + $10.00 shipping. So Nitric would cost a lot more beside it is a hobby for me and I have a lot of time for the HCL to work. Thanks Jack
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Well said Jack. that is my situation as well, although I would like to get some nitric acid one day just to experiment with. But thank you for posting your experience, because that's what I would like this post to be about. Not just me using the AP method but also the different ways pins can be handled.
> 
> So please anybody reading this that has pictures of how they process pins, and/or stories please share them here. Thank you
Click to expand...


Nitric is by you and cheap ask farmers, nurserymen, or machine shops just to name a few people that use it. Its like e-scrap you just need to ask.

Eric


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## Geo

search for Butchers "killing two birds with one stone" post. he has a method of making nitric acid using a pickle jug, sodium nitrate, sulfuric acid, water and gold plated pins. you will have a clean nitric acid and clean gold foils at the end of the process, plus you will have some sodium sulfate.


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## maynman1751

> plus you will have some sodium sulfate



I have searched, but can't find any practical use for Sodium Sulfate! What am I missing? Thanks in advance, John.


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## jmdlcar

Sometime I don't think search works. I search for thing and comes up with 0 hits but spend up to hour by just looking for it the hard way and find it just what I was searching for. I know this is off topic sorry.


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## butcher

Nitric acid recipe:
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=315


Kill two birds one rock:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6199

Sodium bisulfate can be used like nitric acid; I use it to make ferrous sulfate.
Sodium bisulfate can also be used in a fusion with rhodium powders to make them water-soluble.


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## maynman1751

Butcher! I'm no chemical genius so bear with me. I asked about Sodium Sulfate and you answered about Sodium Bisulfate. What if any is the difference?  Thanks Richard.


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## jmdlcar

I think when the comes to use Nitric Acid I'm going to buy that chemical and not going to try and make it just to save some money. When trying to make anything that you can buy can lead into a problems beside if you buy the chemical it has a label on the bottle or box what in it. And that go with any other chemical that can be made. Thanks Jack


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## butcher

Formula for sodium sulfate Na2SO4 and sodium bisulfate NaHSO4, they both are salts of sulfuric acid and sodium metal, the Bisulfate has hydrogen in its formula so it is an acidic salt, sodium bisulfate can easily give up this hydrogen in a reaction,(acting much like sulfuric acid) like with another metal( like Iron if your making ferrous sulfate),if you reacted iron Fe in our example with sodium bisulfate NaHSO4 in water you could form a ferrous sulfate FeSO4 (copperas), and then the byproduct would be sodium sulfate, 

Fe(S)+ 2NaHSO4(aq)--> FeSO4(aq)+ Na2SO4(aq) + H2(g)

evaporation of the solution above would form nice green copperas crystals you can use to test for gold in solution in a spot plate test, or you can use to precipitate gold from aqua regia, or for other reaction you may need ferrous sulfate.

When making nitric acid using sodium nitrate and sulfuric acid your salt byproduct would be a salt of sodium and a sulfate so you will make either sodium sulfate or sodium bisulfate salt in solution with your nitric acid, which one you form depends on the concentration of your sulfuric acid in the reaction with the nitrate salt, if making nitric acid without distilling I would make sodium sulfate, if distilling nitric to make nitric acid I would make sodium bisulfate, the concentrations and volumes of acid from these two reactions would also be different.

Sodium sulfate can be made into sodium bisulfate by reacting the salt in sulfuric acid in a heated reaction,

Na2SO4 + H2SO4 --> 2NaHSO4

Sodium bisulfate NaHSO4 can also be obtained as a byproduct from reaction of making HCl (using rock salt and sulfuric acid)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bisulfate


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfate


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## tek4g63

Hi everybody!

Day 21
* My 2 gallons of AP is very dark and there is a large amount of gold foils floating around. There is still a bunch of unfinished pins in the bottom. I could feel them when I stirred it with a large plastic spoon. The dark color of the solution could be because the reaction of the base metals is still very active or because it is saturated with copper. So just to be on the safe side I added a third gallon of hydrochloric acid. (I was mistaken in my earlier post, I did not use my 3.5 gallon bucket, I used a 5 gallon one. Bad notes, sorry)

The way I look at it is, I can't use too much hydrochloric acid for my AP because if its not fully saturated by these pins I can reuse it for more pins or fingers. Plus I'm only paying like $ 6 a gallon so why not add more when needed, right?


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## jmdlcar

How much longer do you think? Is the liquid green or black?


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## tek4g63

jmdlcar said:


> How much longer do you think? Is the liquid green or black?



Not sure how much longer. It is taking a bit longer than I expected, but its not surprising. Many of the pins were fully plated with no exposed base metals. So they will take a bit longer for the AP to work is magic on them. I'm sure it would have went a bit faster if I had just started with 3 or 4 gallons of hydrochloric acid.

About the color of the solution. Yes and yes! It is green but so dark green it looks pitch black. That's normal though, when the reaction is in its full fury the solution can look black and after all copper is digested , if left alone will return to green. Unless it is fully saturated with copper then it will stay looking black. If it is truly saturated there would be a white powder on the bottom with the unfinished pins. I should have used the spoon to scoop up some pins to check for that, but I didn't.


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## jmdlcar

tek4g63, If I would use AP then it would take 2 oz of HCL for 1 oz of pins. I came up with this when you said 3 gal of HCL to 100 oz of pins. If I'm wrong please tell me. I just don't know how much peroxide I need to use. Plus I know it takes air pump to make it work. I'm setting up for this process. Thanks Jack


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## Geo

guys, thats really not enough solution to be effective for that much material. it may be enough acid but not enough volume of solution. to add water to it now would create white copper chloride crystals. the next time add the water before the reaction starts. if you are worried about volume, you can always evaporate the solution back down. if you have 32% muriatic acid, dilute it with equal amounts of water. 2 gallons of acid with 2 gallons of water. even with hcl, remember to add acid to water and never water to acid.


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## eesakiwi

tek4g63 said:


> jmdlcar said:
> 
> 
> 
> If it is truly saturated there would be a white powder on the bottom with the unfinished pins.
Click to expand...


What is that white powder?

When I used HCL acid to remove the lead/tin solder from the boards, it had a white powder in the bottom of the beaker.
Then after I stored the liquid in a plastic bottle, it coated the inside of the bottle with a silvery layer.
So I expect its lead, it does move around a bit with the liquid which isn't what I expected to happen if its 'plated out' like a copper sulphate solution does onto steel.

Then, last night when I poured out the green/yellow acid from a gold/copper pins & HCL/Peroxide mix into a plastic bottle for storage & washed the remaining pins with clean hot water I ended up with a lot of those white crystals in the bottom of the wash solution.
They don't seem (I'm very sure) to be the same as the Lead solder white crystals.
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A while later I figure it out that its a copper product & indicates the solution is saturated with copper but with gold still in solution.
Its all in storage anyway.


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## Geo

two different metals. the first sounds like lead chloride (long, slender, needle shaped crystals) and the second sounds like copper chloride (square, blocky and white). do a little reading on the two (appearance, color, shape, how its formed) then you can study on how to avoid it and/or deal with it once its formed.


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## texan

Don't get in a big rush....it may take 2 months or so for the volume of material you have to reduce "most" of the base metal and the first run will not get all of the base metal.

Texan


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## tek4g63

From geo: the next time add the water before the reaction starts

Thank you again geo. I will do that next time for sure. After this batch of pins gets done I have roughly three pounds of close cut fingers ready to go into the reaction chamber. I'll use diluted HCL for them. Instead of adding peroxide to that batch could I just add a cup of the used AP from my pins? Really that's just concentrated copper II chloride right? So if I already have C2C formed in my leaching solution and have my bubbler there to keep the reaction going, there would be no need for peroxide to jump start the reaction right?


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## Geo

hey, i believe you are catching on. 8) thats exactly right. try this instead though. the AP solution you are using now, even if it is saturated, still has a lot of action left in it. if you want to be sure, check the PH with a test strip. it should be 2-3 unless you have added a strong base (im sure you haven't). when this batch is done, remove all material and filter the solution (which you should have done to reclaim your foils), add the solution back to your reaction chamber and replace the bubbler. bubble air through the solution for a few days without any material in it. you will notice a shift in color from dark to a lighter shade of green. remove the bubbler and allow solution to settle for a couple of hours. decant the solution off being careful not to pour out any sediment. tilt the bucket to concentrate, remove the liquid as close as you can get to any sediment, and then add the sediment to your stockpot, replace the solution, replace the bubbler, add your material,top off any shortage of fluid with fresh hcl and start the reaction again. you can re-use the same solution over and over until it becomes saturated with TIN and not copper. thats the reason you should remove as much tin from your material before adding to AP as you can.


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## tek4g63

Just thought you all might like to see these pictures. I took them tonight before work.I thought this looked pretty cool. There is so many foils floating around because the bubbler is going full blast. If I remove the bubbler most of them leave the surface. there is not many pins left in the bottom, maybe half a pound.Almost there!


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## tek4g63

Tonight when I checked my bucket there was a bunch of copper chloride white powder in the bottom with the undissolved pins. My volume of solution is already to the point where it was going to be too difficult to handle. So I setup my strainer with wetted coffee filters and began to reduce the volume of my solution. After I removed about 2 and a half gallons and safely put it aside I added another gallon of fresh HCL to the remaining solution. I believe that with no more pins than I have left in there that should finish it off. I took the foils that I recovered and washed them and now have them sitting in fresh HCL. Should I just add these back to the reaction chamber and worry about them when all is said and done? Or should I just do the hot HCL wash on them and set them aside untill I'm ready to refine? 

I'm very impressed with just how many foils I got. Ill try and get a good picture tomorrow.


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## Geo

dont add them back. the bubbling action will just break them into smaller pieces. if you have them out, leave them out.


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## Palladium

He does have a pretty firm understanding.


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## tek4g63

Just Submitting these for your viewing pleasure. These are the foils I recovered while reducing the volume of my solution. This is during their first wash, room temp HCL diluted 50/50 with tap water. Next wash will be with hot HCL. 

I'm excited because these were just the foils that were suspended in solution. I reduced the volume of solution very carefully and painstakingly with a turkey baster. I didn't want to stir up what was in the bottom. Also I let the solution set undisturbed without the bubbler running for 20 hours before I started reducing it so that most of the heavies could settle to the bottom.

I want to say thank you to everyone for helping me get this far. This has been fun so far and it will be even better next time thanks to your input!

I plan on running this post all the way up to making my first shinny button, so please keep the valuable information coming!


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## tek4g63

Sorry my not so smart phone posted my last one twice.


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## jmdlcar

Nice gold foil tek4g63. Looks like you have a few grams or two. What pins I have hope they turn out like your did.


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## tek4g63

jmdlcar said:


> Nice gold foil tek4g63. Looks like you have a few grams or two. What pins I have hope they turn out like your did.



Thank you Jack! Yeah I'm pretty excited because I know that there is double or even triple this amount of foils waiting for me when all is said and done. I hope to see a nice picture like this from you soon! The greater majority of the pins I'm processing here are the same ones that I sent you. I know it wasn't much but if you throw them in with any other pins you can get your hands on it will all add up.


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## jmdlcar

What you sent plus I have about 3oz of ide, floppy and jumper pins from motherboard. I just don't know how much HCL and Peroxide to use. I do have a air pump to make bubble.


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## tek4g63

jmdlcar said:


> What you sent plus I have about 3oz of ide, floppy and jumper pins from motherboard. I just don't know how much HCL and Peroxide to use. I do have a air pump to make bubble.



I wish I had a solid answer for you on that. Right now I'm up to 4 gallons on my 100 ounces and that doesn't count washing and refining later on. I also don't know for sure yet if I will have to add more or not.

I know that you have been throwing around the idea of a striping cell too. Don't let me persuade you one way or the other because I'm still new and my reasons for using my chosen method will probably be different from yours. If you do chose the AP method I hope this topic helps you along the way, and I will answer any questions I can.


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## jmdlcar

I don't know if the pins you gave me should be process with the ones I have or not. Cause they are not the same type. I don't know if I should use the AP or the Sulfuric Acid cell method. I know the AP works cause you did it.


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## tek4g63

Hi everyone! Just wanted to do another update.

During the next month my family life will be quite busy and we will be out of town 3 times adding up to a total of 3 weeks away. Because of that I decided to recover what foils I could and set any undissolved pins aside for later. This is not how I wanted this to go but I had no idea it would take nearly 2 months to finish.

There were more undissolved pins than I thought there would be. I will either be using a different process for this quantity of pins in the future or I will break it up into smaller batches, like maybe 10 ounces.

I washed my recovered foils first in dilute HCL at room temp, then twice in hot HCL. The pictures below are after the last hot wash had set for a while to cool. I will probably be washing them one more time before I refine them.

Even though I didn't get to let all the pins process I am still pleased with the results so far. I can't wait to make a button that I can take to work and weigh!


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## butcher

tek4g63,

Good job, I like seeing this as you progress through this process of recovering of gold from your pins.
I can patiently wait for that picture of the refined gold button, take your time and the results will be worth it.
I like how your studying is paying off, keep up the good work, your doing a good job.
Keep being patient; rushing things can lead to problems.
Enjoy the vacation.


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## goldsilverpro

Very good!


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## trashmaster

great job.  I'll say 3+oz :roll:


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## Geo

gold foils in liquid is really fluffy with a lot of the volume being liquid. once they are dried it will be a lot less volume. too it will still be contaminated with base metal, though it would be impossible to say how much. if i had to guess, i would say somewhere in the twenty gram area.


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## tek4g63

Thank you everyone. You all and this great forum are directly responsible for my success! Your encouraging words have made my day much better.


trashmaster said:


> great job.  I'll say 3+oz :roll:


That would be amazing, but I know better than to get my hopes up. From what I have read a 1% yeld (1oz) would be legendary, so if I can get anywhere close to that I will be super happy! Even though I do like your number way better. 

Geo,
Thank you too! 20 grams would be awesome!


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## Smack

I'm thinking 13g. button.


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## tek4g63

Ok I hate to bug you guys with questions because you have helped me so much already, but..........

I have never dealt with this large volume of foils before and I have a couple of questions about refining them. I'm going to use HCL/CL to refine the foils and wanted to know if doing them all at the same time in the pictured jar would be a good idea or a bad one?

What I fear is heat build up during the reaction to dissolve the gold and also when precipitating the gold. If heat would be an issue, could I just have the jar in an ice water bath when I have the reaction going? Or would separating them into several smaller batches be better? 

The vessel I use to do my hot washes on my foils would not be good for decanting the solution off of my powder and my wife is already mad at me for spending money ($15.00) to get 2 melting dishes from Steve's (lasersteve) web site. I can't wait till they get here though, thank you Steve!

I open to any and all suggestions. Thank you!


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## Harold_V

tek4g63 said:


> I have never dealt with this large volume of foils before and I have a couple of questions about refining them. I'm going to use HCL/CL to refine the foils and wanted to know if doing them all at the same time in the pictured jar would be a good idea or a bad one?


My opinion? 
Run them all at the same time, assuming you're comfortable with the process. 



> What I fear is heat build up during the reaction to dissolve the gold and also when precipitating the gold. If heat would be an issue, could I just have the jar in an ice water bath when I have the reaction going? Or would separating them into several smaller batches be better?


If you chill the solution, the reaction will be quite subdued. If you'd like to dissolve without risk of over reaction, add HCl, then add a few drops of Cl at a time, giving it time to work. That way you'll use only what is required to dissolve the material, without risk of overheating. Warming the solution will accelerate dissolution. 

When it comes to precipitation, you don't have to worry about a boil over. Even if you precipitate from a VERY heavily concentrated solution, it won't create enough heat to boil over, although it may get hot enough to stop precipitating. That's not uncommon with SO2 gas, but it requires a concentration in the vicinity of five ounces/liter. Assuming you have three ounces present, if you use a 1500 or 2000 ml beaker, there's no fear of creating enough heat to give you problems. Just make sure there's enough room for the precipitant of choice, assuming it will be dissolved in more water. 



> The vessel I use to do my hot washes on my foils would not be good for decanting the solution off of my powder and my wife is already mad at me for spending money ($15.00) to get 2 melting dishes from Steve's (lasersteve) web site.


Use any glass vessel you can find, including a gallon pickle jar. Just don't try heating, as the large thick jars don't like uneven heat. As far as your wife complaining, she might see things from a different view when you allow her to hold a button of gold that is worth more than her car!  She'll start seeing the few dollars you've spent as not a big deal. 

Luck! 

Be certain to share a picture of the button. Make damned sure you wash the gold properly. Makes all the difference in the world. 

Harold


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## tek4g63

Thank you very much Harold! I will take your advice and chill the solution. Adding very small shots of bleach is normally how I do it because I would rather "do it right, then do it fast". Quoting a great man, my father.

About the washing of the powder. I will refine at least twice and depending on the color of the solution maybe three times. Also I copied and pasted your washing procedure to my phone and my PC and have a paper copy in my note book. I will not skip a step, thank you so much for giving us that kind of information for free.

I hope you are correct about my wife, she is a stubborn woman and not easily persuaded to change her point of view. In a lot of ways though that is why I married her.


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## goldenchild

Harold_V said:


> As far as your wife complaining, she might see things from a different view when you allow her to hold a button of gold that is worth more than her car!  She'll start seeing the few dollars you've spent as not a big deal.



This seems to happen often around here. And it always ends the same way 8) Just don't let them touch platinum or then you'll be in trouble.


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## qst42know

It's not a problem once she knows what to look for. :mrgreen:


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## tek4g63

Well I'm back in town for a few days so I'm back to the task at hand. I digested my foils in HCL/CL yesterday and tonight I precipitated the gold with SMB. I'm going to let it sit for a few hours to settle before I decant and start my washes before my second digestion. The solution was a bit greener than I would have hoped but I know washing and further refining will take care of any impurities. Below are the pictures taken, after filtering and adding tap water and about 30 minutes after adding SMB. I like how the gold powder kind of clumped up this time.

I ran into one small head scratcher that I will be asking for advice on but I will post that after this post.


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## tek4g63

Keep in mind that I am still very new at this please. After filtering my auric chloride I was left with a good amount of grey sediment in my filter. I've processed foils from small batches of pins twice now but have never ran into this problem. How should I go about testing this sediment to determine what it could be?

Ps. On a side note, I think I need to start a post to ask how to recover gold from june beetles lol. Two of the pesky suckers got into my solution while I was letting the chlorine evaporate out.

Seriously though, thank you all for your help!


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## tek4g63

Just one more quick update. I received my melting dishes from steve while I was gone. Thank you steve they are great! I followed your procedure for seasoning my dish and did my first ever melt tonight! I melted just the powder from that test batch of foils that I posted about on this thread a while back. The foils weighed 1.3 grams (test batch not from the 100 ounces of pins) here is the pretty little BB I made tonight.I will weigh it a work tomorrow night. 

Sorry about the low quality of the pictures.


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## trashmaster

Congrats on the newborn  .

Hope you and the wife have many more and larger in the future :mrgreen:


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## tek4g63

trashmaster said:


> Congrats on the newborn  .
> 
> Hope you and the wife have many more and larger in the future :mrgreen:



Thank you! Yeah that little fella was just a test for me. I did a small quantity of pins in AP, then then took the foils from them and refined them, then worked on my melting technique to get this little guy. It was all in the name of learning, so he means allot to me. I'll never part with him.

My next will be from this 100 ounce batch of pins so she should be much bigger. Just to give you a visual reference. The picture below is the powder that made this little one on it's first drop. It's in a small pickle jar. sorry about the bad angle, I took it for my notes to show the color of solution on first drop as compared to the drop after second refining.


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## Anonymous

tek4g63 said:


> I followed your procedure for seasoning my dish and did my first ever melt tonight!


That is awesome! If you can afford it,I would suggest that you frame that bad boy.If you decide to do that,I would buy a frame at the dollar store,cut a piece of carboard to fit in it(have the kids paint the cardboard),glue the button in the middle,and write the details just below the button,like date,time,size,and what it came from.Just an idea.


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## Geo

are you testing your spent solutions? it seems to still be colored after the drop. if the foils were clean, and the solution was yellow which denotes the absence of impurities, the spent solution should be clear. test all your solutions after you precipitate to be sure you got all the gold. it sure looks suspect to me.

by the way, very nice button. good job for a first time.


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## butcher

White salts (what are they and how can I deal with them).

White or gray sediment, can be several things, depending on what was processed and steps taken during the process, since we are discussing that these powders came from chloride solution, these are metal chloride salts, possibility's can include copper I chloride (CuCl), lead chloride (PbCl2), silver chloride (AgCl), if bleach (sodium hypochlorite) was used in the process sodium chloride (NaCl) (table salt) is very likely, (if mercury was involved like from dental waste or ore it can also form insoluble chlorides).

Also you could possibly have some other metal or insoluble substance depending on source materials (ceramic, silica sands from ore) un-dissolved or cemented gold or some other metal that would not or did not dissolve or was possibly cemented or precipitated from solution.

Neutralizing the powders (to keep from forming valuable metal chlorides during the incineration process) and an incineration, can help to remove inorganic materials and oils, and oxidize any base metals (like tin if it is involved from working with electronic scrap), incineration will not always be necessary (depending on conditions), but it is usually very beneficial.

Almost the whole process can be performed in a corning casserole dish, or amber vision ware on a hotplate (electric hotplate best for solutions or gas burner type which is hotter and works best for the incineration process), even the incineration of the powders using a Mapp gas, or propane torch, and dissolving metals or powder's. Heating solutions in acids while using heat, decanting of solutions and wash's can be done in these containers, using the suction bulb, or pipette to decant solutions after powders settle from solutions, I will process many items using these tools, and rarely remove the solid powders during almost the whole processes, decanting solutions as needed, these tools are an important part of my lab, and can be found at your second hand store, check your local pharmacy for the suction bulb and pipettes, or order from online. 

Copper I chloride (CuCl), water insoluble will dissolve in HCl forming the familiar green (or dark brown depending on concentration) solution of copper II chloride (CuCl2), a boil in HCL can help also to pick up other base metals that would be soluble in this acid, this can also help to acidify these salts remaining, the HCL alone would not dissolve valuables, or metals like gold (without the use of an oxidizer),HCl will not dissolve silver in the powders, or the silver chloride (a very small amount of silver chloride (AgCL) may form AgCl2, which may go into solution because of highly acidic chloride solution but you can get this small amount back later), after incinerating any tin (if involved) in the powders to oxidize them (during the incineration) this hot HCl solution will also dissolve the tin oxides (if you had previous troubles from tin, or filtering.

Boiling hot water washes will help to remove the soluble chloride metal salts, and the lead chloride (PbCl2) this lead chloride is fairly soluble in boiling water, but lead chloride is not soluble in cold water (so these water wash's when decanted to a jar will reform the white lead salts as the solution cools), silver chloride is not soluble in hot or cold water so these boiling washes are a good way to separate these two metal salts, it is important to let the powders in these boiling hot water wash's settle before decanting the soluble lead salts (lowering the heat but keeping solution hot, but not moving, while the fluffy silver chloride settles which takes a little time, before decanting the solution).

Sodium chloride (NaCl) (table salt) is also water soluble, these can be removed with dissolving in water, of coarse warm or hot water dissolves these easier, they can easily be dissolved any time during the process.

Since you are not, or should not be working with mercury (Hg), I will not go into this metal at this point, and if by chance you were, it should be removed early in the process using a retort to safely deal with it, and should not be carried into the process to form chloride salts.

Now lets say we are left with silver chloride and gold powders or flakes, we could dissolve the silver chloride using ammonium hydroxide washes (household ammonia will work) this forms a soluble silver diammine complex, decant this solution from the gold, acidify this solution using HCl additions (an important step for safety reasons), also wash the gold powder in HCl (for safety reasons), the HCl added to this silver diammine solution (Ag(NH3)2 + Cl-) will again form a silver chloride precipitant, this will assure you powders and solutions are safe from forming an explosive powder when dried, the silver chloride can be saved in a jar (keep wet), until you collect enough to convert the silver chloride to elemental silver before melting.

The gold powder or flake if any can be washed, and process later, or in next batch.
Do not forget to test any solutions that can contain dissolved values.

Decanted solutions can also contain traces of values carried over in the decanting process, these salts can be re-crystallized and stored separately, also the traces of values retrieved from these salts or powders.

Stockpots should also be maintained for collection of values.

Read Hokes, the source for many of these ideas and to learn how to identify or deal with metals in solutions, read the book worth its weight in gold if you wish to get gold.

I'll bet that pretty little gold button in your wife hands will change her thinking a little bit. 

You have done a great job, and good thread showing your progress, keep up the good work.

Some pictures of the tools I find very useful in my lab (outside in the fresh air under my ole oak tree)


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## tek4g63

Geo said:


> are you testing your spent solutions? it seems to still be colored after the drop. if the foils were clean, and the solution was yellow which denotes the absence of impurities, the spent solution should be clear. test all your solutions after you precipitate to be sure you got all the gold. it sure looks suspect to me.
> 
> by the way, very nice button. good job for a first time.



Thank you geo. I'm glad you said that about the color of the solution, because I was thinking the same thing. I'm currently making me some new stannous chloride because my last batch was getting pretty old and id rather not trust it. To answer your question though, yes I have kept all solutions that have not been tested. They are jared up and labeled. 

About my foils being clean though, when I got back in town the foils were still in the solution from the last wash cycle (last hot HCL) and it was faintly blue. I got excited to get back to it though and proceeded to rinse them with water then digest. So there is a chance that I didn't get them as clean as I would have liked.

Thanks for the kind words about the button. It ain't nothing to brag about, but the journey I took getting to that was well worth it.


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## tek4g63

Butcher, once again you have blown me away. Thank you so much for taking the valuable time out of your day to help me out. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I work nights so I had to sleep and then I had to read your reply several times to be sure I had a grasp on that great information. I have read Hoke, started her book the first week after joining this forum. Now that I have had some good hands on experience I'm in the process of rereading it.

After reading your post I have made some notes on how to test what this sediment is. Please tell me if this sounds correct.

First- I will boil it in hot water and see if their is any change. If so, I will let the resulting water cool to see if any sediment reappears. This will tell me if it is lead our table salt.
Second- I will run it in hot HCL. If there is a color change and a reduction or elimination of the sediment I will let the solution cool then test for values.
Third- I will use ammonia to see if it contains silver. If any sediment remains from this step, I will wash it thoroughly and see if it will digest in HCL/CL.

Throughout theses tests any sediment that didn't go into solution will be washed and moved to the next test. Does this sound correct?

Yes you are correct about my wife! For the first time since starting this hobby my wife actually encouraged me to work on it! Before now I've had to work on this at night after everyone was asleep, one my one night off of work a week. I hope she keeps this attitude from now on,lol


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## butcher

tek4g63,
I work a late shift, and know how one can burn his candle from both ends.

I will try to post a process, that may cover more than what your dealing with, but that can help you or others when dealing with these solutions, tin and lead can be troublesome, and since we deal with a lot of these metals from electronic scrap, we need to understand how to deal with them. You may not need all of these steps below depending on the conditions of your material, and I may add some details that are irrelevant, or you may not wish to use, also I have put in a long day so I do not know i this post will come out as just one long rambling on.

If tin is involved, (like if you had trouble filtering the previous solutions), I would neutralize the powders with sodium hydroxide, wash in hot water to remove the salts that form from this reaction. this would help to remove chlorides that with silver or gold can become volitile during the inceneration process,
NaOH + HCl --> NaCl + H2O
(Notice in the reaction above the strong acid and the strong base (caustic), gives a neutral salt water you could drink, or put on french frys, when either of the two starting ingredients would burn your skin).
Dry the powders and incinerate red hot, to oxidize the tin and other base metals. Cool the powders, then a hard boil in HCl, adding just a little water at the end, (not too much), lower heat but keep hot to let the insoluble powders settle, and decant the HCl wash with the dissolved metals, water washes till no more color, (depending on conditions the HCl and water washes may need repeated). (if tin is not a problem this step can be skipped when dealing with your white salts).


Copper I chloride (if you did not dissolve it out earlier in the incineration and boiling HCl wash's, we used to get rid of the tin problem above), (this copper I chloride can be removed before the lead or after the lead) the copper I chloride can be dissolved in hot HCL, the color of the solution will be very dark brown if you have a lot of this powder, a less saturated solution will look green, and very little copper in solution can look blue, I would use HCl till most of the copper chloride is removed and then do hot water washes until clear, (these hot washes will also dissolve lead and the Nacl salts the lead will precipitate when cooled the salt will stay in solution as long as solution is not saturated).


The salts should be somewhat acidic to begin with (if you have neutralized them previously bring the pH towards the acid side with a little HCl), if they came from acid solution previously just proceed with the washes.

I would boil in water, lower heat to let powders settle, but keep solution as hot as possible, this will dissolve lead chloride and any table salts NaCl. When powder settles (silver chloride is fluffy, gold can be small flakes that will swirl in solution, and takes time to settle, silver chloride you can see it, the silver chloride will look white a fluffy powder cottage cheese or like milk in solution, silver will not be clear in the solution like the lead chloride, or table salt in the hot water wash, decant this hot solution into a cooling jar, I use the suction bulb tool to decant, a trick is to cut a pipette and to fit it on the end of the suction bulb, this gives a small opening, able to pick up drops of solution) and a longer reach when getting down into the bottom of a tall vessel), you can decant your solutionand then through a filter into your cooling jar, filtering of these washes should be done hot(you can forget the filter and go straight into the jar also, much depends on conditions of solutions and how you wish to work, (in this jar when cooled you will see the lead chloride precipitate, the salt NaCl will remain dissolved even when this water wash cools), you may also see some color from copper or some other base metal in this solution, repeat these washes until you get no more lead chloride forms when the decanted solution cools.

Copper I chloride (if you did not dissolve it out earlier can be remove after the lead and NaCl.

Sometimes I will use two cooling jars and return the cooled liquid back to the boiling pot to pick up more lead (to lower my waste volume), one jar is cooling of while the other is taking the hot solution, this is only needed if your dealing with large volumes of these white powders, if you use this the later washes should use fresh water.(this is not necessary just one trick I will use), (on another note: as solutions of most metals will dissolve more metals in solutions and saturate when hot, and precipitate the metal salts when cooled, I will sometimes use this to remove metals from a solution using the same solution and temperatures to transfer the metals, or even dissolve and precipitate them from the same solution , like using saturation points to do a job), (if this paragraph if confusing just disregard it).

Now where am I ?
We have removed the NaCl, PbCl2, and CuCl, and some other base metals, that should leave us with silver chloride and gold, well lets not use the ammonia here this time to dissolve silver as it can be dangerous if we do not understand all the dangers, we can use HCl and bleach to dissolve the gold from our silver chloride powders, I will not go into all the other details on this, except to say the silver chloride is insoluble for the most part in this solution, also I can add that the remaining powders we separated can be
re-crystallized for higher purity, and I save my lead salts (figure I will use them some day), and also remember that the silver chloride will need cleaned up and converted to metal silver powders before melting, if you only have small amounts of these powders label jars and store them until you get a jar full to process, the silver chloride should be kept wet, just a little wash water covering them in the jar and a plastic lid (so rust will not become a problem).

Hope this rambling on makes sense, as I am very tired, I also hope his is somewhat useful.

Read Hoke's, do her experiments, that is where you can learn the things I have tried to explain here, for me almost every recovery and sometimes refining is can be different and how I may deal with it can change, but the principles do not change, so learning the principles Hoke's teaches lets you know how to adapt your process to circumstances or challenges your faced with at that moment.
Read it until it is as clear as the blue sky, after recovering and refining for a while if you going back to reread her book you will see things you never saw the first few times you read that.

Well it’s off to bed with a good book for me,
You have a good night.


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## tek4g63

Butcher, that is exactly what I needed to know. Right now I have the mystery sediment in a baby food jar with some tap water and that is where it will stay until I'm ready to follow your excellent instructions.

Now onto the next issue. I washed the powder from this batch per Harold instructions. The powder witch was all clumped up after the first refine, stayed clumped up through the wash cycles.it would sort of bust up when I stirred it but it would quickly clump back up. Is that normal?

Now for the thing that has me worried the most! I started to digest my powders for a second refine and part way into the digestion I have stopped. The color is not the golden yellow I have come to expect. Instead it is orange! I hope I have not just messed everything up. 

Here is what I did after the wash cycles were complete. I added 1/2 a cup of tap water to the mud then added 2/3 a cup of HCL then 2 ounces of bleach. Gave it all a good stir and headed into the house to play with the kids. When I went back out about 2 hours later to add a bit more bleach I found my solution looked like this! Was I wrong to dilute the HCL before digestion? Usually I do any diluting after digestion before precipitation. Or did I mess up during the wash cycles? I will leave it as is until I can find an answer. I sure hope I didn't make a very costly mistake.


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## Harold_V

tek4g63 said:


> The powder witch was all clumped up after the first refine, stayed clumped up through the wash cycles.it would sort of bust up when I stirred it but it would quickly clump back up. Is that normal?


If precipitated gold is quite pure, yes, it's normal. It readily bonds to itself. In my experience, I found that gold that came down very dirty would not bond, even after being well washed. It may be to do with its configuration. Dunno. 

Harold


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## tek4g63

Thank you Harold. Have you seen auric chloride this color before? Do you think I should precede with the additions of bleach, or would it be best to decant and save what gold I can while I try and figure out what to do with the orange gold bering solution?


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## maynman1751

> The color is not the golden brown I have come to expect. Instead it is orange! I hope I have not just messed everything up.



The color is fine! It's probably because it's more concentrated that gives it the deeper color. Continue with your dissolution.


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## Geo

i agree, orange is the color of very concentrated gold in solution, even red right before the liquid becomes saturated with gold.


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## tek4g63

Thank you guys! I'm very sorry for little freak out I had. Up to this last stage in my process I have had very few problems. I hope you all can understand why I kind of freaked out, I have put allot of hard work into this and I want to be successful. Thank you for calming me down.

I finished up with the digestion of the powder for the second refine and as you said, it was almost red (red orange). It is setting out right now letting the chlorine evaporate. I will precipitate the gold once again after work and post pictures. Thank you all again!


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## Harold_V

tek4g63 said:


> Thank you Harold. Have you seen auric chloride this color before? Do you think I should precede with the additions of bleach, or would it be best to decant and save what gold I can while I try and figure out what to do with the orange gold bering solution?


The only thing that comes to mind, for me, is that there may be a trace of palladium present. Color does strike me as being slightly odd, but that may be due to the monitor. Hard to say. 
Try taking a drop, which is placed in a spot plate. Add a crystal of ferrous sulfate, which will precipitate the gold in solution. Test the resulting drop with stannous, or with DMG, to see if you get a reaction for palladium. 

I'm used to seeing gold solutions go from yellow through a more red/orange color. Yours, on my monitor, appears to have a hint of brown, instead, which would indicate to me the presence of a hint of palladium. 

In my experiences, gold that was precipitated from a solution that contained palladium had a tendency to come down a chocolate brown color. Never the light cinnamon color that was typical. 

The solution in question is a wonderful example of why it's important to understand testing. 

Harold


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## tek4g63

Thank you Harold.

I do not have a watch glass yet or ferrous sulfate. Would the bottom if a jar work (flipped upside down of course). Would sodium meta bisulfite work in the place of the ferrous sulfate (copperas)?

I know these questions truly show my inexperience, but I assure you I will only have to ask them once.

I hope to get some better lab ware soon after I sell a bit of my gold. Maybe I have something I could trade another member for a watch glass and a proper flask. Just a thought.


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## Geo

Thad, for months, i used a 5" lens from a magnifying glass. of coarse it is glass and not plastic. i paid $2 for a 2 piece set (2.5" and 5") from Freds department store. i took the glass from the frame. it worked great until i got a watch glass. also, i bought an 8" clock from the Dollar General store for $8 and removed the glass (we still use the clock).


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## goldenchild

Harold_V said:


> tek4g63 said:
> 
> 
> 
> The powder witch was all clumped up after the first refine, stayed clumped up through the wash cycles.it would sort of bust up when I stirred it but it would quickly clump back up. Is that normal?
> 
> 
> 
> If precipitated gold is quite pure, yes, it's normal. It readily bonds to itself. In my experience, I found that gold that came down very dirty would not bond, even after being well washed. It may be to do with its configuration. Dunno.
> 
> Harold
Click to expand...


I find that no matter how dirty a solution, filtration is the key to nice clumpy gold. I've created some of the nastiest solutions you can think of but as long as I took my time and filtered it to the point where you could see straight through it from the bottom of the precipitation vessel, the gold would come together. Even after merely decanting and boiling in plain water the gold would bond to itself even further. An extremely clean precipitation vessel is also very important. Right before every precipitation I clean the precipitation vessel with rubbing alcohol and toilet tissue. When you can tilt your precipitation vessel around sliding the gold every which way knocking into the sides of the glass and there are no clouds you know you have very clean gold.


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## tek4g63

Just for the sake of learning I turned a baby food jar upside down and put a decent sized drop of my red orange auric chloride on the bottom. Them I took a small drop of my SMB water mix and added it to the drop of auric chloride. A reaction happened and after the brown dust settled out I touched the top of the now clear droplet with a q tip. Then put a drop of my new made stannous chloride on that, no reaction, no color change at all. I took a different q tip and touched my auric chloride then tested that with stannous and immediately got a deep purple color. I know this is not exactly what Harold suggested so I will wait to go any further. Just thought I would share.

Sorry no pictures this time, my phone is charging up.

Thank you for the suggestions geo, I will keep my eyes open for similar items.


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## etack

You should be fine the odds of Pd is slim to none. your feed stock was only unused pins so it unlikely that there was Pd plating under the gold.

Sometimes when I use HCl Bleach the color is dark like that till all the Cl gas is gone.

Cant wait to see you yields.

Eric


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## Harold_V

tek4g63 said:


> Thank you Harold.
> 
> I do not have a watch glass yet or ferrous sulfate. Would the bottom if a jar work (flipped upside down of course).


Not a watch glass, but a spot plate. You can use a white plastic spoon for a spot plate (for this, you can thank Palladium, for it was his idea). 

For the record, I endorse spot plate use. It's much better than using any other type of testing apparatus, as you can further manipulate the resulting test by transferring some of the solution to yet another cavity. Often you will do a reaction of one kind, simply so you can do a test after the reaction, like in this case. The whole idea is to eliminate any gold that may be in solution, so traces of other values will be more visible. They are often obscured by the bold reaction of stannous chloride with gold. 



> Would sodium meta bisulfite work in the place of the ferrous sulfate (copperas)?


 It might, but I like the ferrous sulfate because you can watch a leaf of gold develop around the crystal, plus you can stir the drop with a glass rod to ensure that all of the gold is down. Because it forms a film instead of fine powder (unlike SMB), the solution is clear. That's a nice feature, but not always important. I suggest you study Hoke on testing. 



> I know these questions truly show my inexperience, but I assure you I will only have to ask them once.


Not a problem, so long as you pursue testing as you're advised. Nothing will set you free in refining like having the ability to determine what you have. Without testing, it's a crap shoot. 



> I hope to get some better lab ware soon after I sell a bit of my gold. Maybe I have something I could trade another member for a watch glass and a proper flask. Just a thought.


Aside form buying proper lab ware and chemicals, when I started refining, I bought precious little. I grew slowly, assuring that what I was doing was at least paying for itself. I understand if you're running on a shoestring, but do yourself a favor and get the basic things that are REALLY needed, such as proper testing chemicals and supplies. Without them, you run blind. One careless mistake can cost you far more than buying these essential provisions---a mistake that may be made because you can't test properly.


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## tek4g63

So sorry for the mix up Harold. I have a white carrell ware dish (more like a tiny plate) that I put over my jar when I'm dissolving my gold. It's about 6in in diameter, I think it was like something a tea cup would have been set on. This dish would work as a spot plate wouldn't it?

I will probably be selling the button from this batch. For two reasons. The first and probably most important reason is to motivate my wife, so I can keep doing what I enjoy. The second reason is, to buy some supplies so that I can keep improving my technique, and to put some money towards buying a good camera.

I have a son that just turned 3 and a daughter that will celebrate her first birthday next month. I want to be able to get good quality pictures and videos of them especially at this age. All I use right now is my phone and although it can take good pictures, any one with kids knows that that little delay when your camera tries to focus can be the difference between capturing a super cute moment and the child moving and missing it entirely. I'm sorry about my rambling. Back to the subject.

I will set up for your suggested testing method this weekend and report back with what I find. Thank you!


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## goldsilverpro

Just about anything white that is impervious to acids could be used in lieu of a spot plate. Someone (Palladium?) uses white plastic spoons.


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## Palladium

You can find a plastic spoon anywhere. :mrgreen:


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## Harold_V

tek4g63 said:


> This dish would work as a spot plate wouldn't it?


Yes, and can be cleaned chemically if it gets stained badly (using AR). The only real negative aspect is that it doesn't have a cavity, unlike a spot plate. They come with six or twelve cavities, so the drop isn't spread. A small one with six cavities is generally more than adequate, although if you have options, get one with twelve, so if you're performing a series of tests, you don't have to stop to clean the cavities between tests. When you've finished, everything is washed to your stock pot and the cavities wiped clean with a piece of paper towel, which is sent to your waste storage to be incinerated and recycled. You lose nothing by testing. 



> I will probably be selling the button from this batch. For two reasons. The first and probably most important reason is to motivate my wife, so I can keep doing what I enjoy. The second reason is, to buy some supplies so that I can keep improving my technique, and to put some money towards buying a good camera.
> 
> I have a son that just turned 3 and a daughter that will celebrate her first birthday next month. I want to be able to get good quality pictures and videos of them especially at this age. All I use right now is my phone and although it can take good pictures, any one with kids knows that that little delay when your camera tries to focus can be the difference between capturing a super cute moment and the child moving and missing it entirely. I'm sorry about my rambling. Back to the subject.


Do not apologize for your good thinking. The kids should come first, and your wife will stand behind you 100% when she realizes that what you're doing will bring money for such things. 

I wish you continued success in your endeavors.

Wish the tiny one a happy birthday for me for next month. Mine is the 14th. 

Harold


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## tek4g63

I will defiantly tell her a special happy birthday from you. Her's is the 15th. My sons birthday was last month. I wasn't so sure about having them so close together in age but now I can see we made the right decision. 

Now I have to confess something.........I hope this does not negatively affect the relationship that I feel like I have with this community.

I set aside 1 fluid ounce of my red orange auric chloride so that I could further build my skills with testing as Harold has suggested (along with the help of Hoke). But mine and my wife's excitement and eagerness got the best of me. I precipitated the gold from the remaining solution. The solution was tap water clear after about an hour and my gold was a pretty light brown mud in the bottom. With my wife over looking this time I ran the powder through the wash cycles, witch didn't take long because there was no color change to my solutions. So I focused on the near boiling water rinses to remove salts at the last stage, what I mean is that I water rinsed it more times than I would if I were just going to refine it again. Put the freshly washed powder in the oven on a pyrex casserole dish to dry then with my wife, son, and nephew watching I melted 6 beautiful buttons!

I really hope that I don't lose any respect I may have had with you all. This is just my first real run, I know that I will get better each and every time.

Will weigh the buttons tomorrow at work and post asap. Thank all of you for your help!


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## kaits31

Excellent job! Those buttons look very clean and really nice! 8)


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## maynman1751

Great looking buttons tek4!


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## tek4g63

Thank you! I will try and get better pictures tomorrow to show the "fire"inside the pipes.

I will be posting a few of these for sale within the next few days. Feel free to let me know if you would be interested via PM. 

Thad.


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## jmdlcar

Very nice button keep it up.


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## butcher

Excellent job, your hard work and paying attention to details is paying off, in good results and hopefully profits, I bet when the wife holds those beauties in her hands, she really likes you new interest and will support you in this, keep up the good work, I suggest you bury some of those pretty gold balls, so those little ones of yours will have what they need later.


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## glondor

Now that is an awesome job. Fantastic first effort. What was your total weight from the pins? 
Now for the hard part,,,, Try to keep 10% of what you make for the future. Cheers.


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## Palladium

Very nice!


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## tek4g63

Things have been very busy at work so I have not yet had the chance to get an accurate weight yet. I'm going to keep taking them to work with me every night till I get them weighed. Maybe tonight will not be so crazy. 

Here are a couple more pictures. I may re melt them because the surface is getting scratched up. I'm keeping them in a small baggie in my shirt pocket and it had robbed the surface of that mirror surface that they had in the first picture I took. But you can still see the cool red hot color that shines in the pipes.


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## Geo

do you think its close to the twenty grams i thought they would be close to?


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## jmdlcar

Are you going to re melt them into 1 big one. I didn't know you just re melt I thought you would have to re process them then melt again.


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## tek4g63

Here is the final weight on a good scale! See the picture below.

Geo, I think that I would have got closer to 20 grams if I had finished all the pins, not lost so much to the filters due to inexperience, and finished dropping the gold from the solution that I set aside for practicing my testing technique. Before you ask, yes I saved all my filters for incineration and I tested all my final solutions with stannous (all negative) before putting them in my stock pot. 8) 

Jack,
No I will not be making one large button because I will be selling 5 of these little guys and putting one aside for my kids collage stash. There is no need to reprocess them to remelt them as long as you don't use a contaminated melting dish, melting the gold again will not affect it's quality.


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## boutselis

Congrats from the (probably) newest kid on the block. I read every post and that was exciting to watch. I really appreciate all the time you took to post your process. 

What are the main things you may do different next time?


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## Smack

Man, I was off by a gram, nice job though, they look very good.


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## tek4g63

boutselis said:


> Congrats from the (probably) newest kid on the block. I read every post and that was exciting to watch. I really appreciate all the time you took to post your process.
> 
> What are the main things you may do different next time?



Thank you for taking the time to read my thread. I hope it was able to help you in some way. I will be posting a type of summary this weekend and it will have a few details about how I plan on processing my next large batch of pins. Hopefully that post will be able to answer your questions. Can't wait to see how you progress in this great hobby.



Smack said:


> Man, I was off by a gram, nice job though, they look very good.



Thank you! Don't worry, when I process my filters and finish up the pins that I had to put on hold, I will post what I got from them and that may just be that missing gram 8)


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## etack

what were you pins from and did you do a surface area calculation on them first to get an estimate. 
nice job 8) 
Eric


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## tek4g63

They were from various things, connector pins (never used), pins used for testing electronics in a manufacturing facility, and several other applications. No I did not get a surface area calculation, but it would have been interesting to have made one then compared it to my actual end result. If I were buying these materials then I would have solid data for sure, but I currently get all my materials for free.


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## richoc

I just read this entire post .
Why were adding more acid all the time?
2 gallons of acid should have done these pins just fine.
Your first gallon of acid might of made it, not sure on the full carrying capacity.
But you would have been done in a week had you not just relied on your air bubbler for oxidation.
It is in there for more for agitation, making the solution move and keeping the reaction running.
You need to be adding more oxidizer all the time to jump start the reaction back up to full speed.i
Please test you left over solution with stannious .
With using this much acid and no oxidixer is why it took so long. 

Nitric acid is $7 a gallon here if you buy it in a 5 gallon container.
Trying to find a way to ship it out to people here that can not find it.

There always is some left in solution to drop out later , I guess because we run the process hotter because we use way more oxidizer in process.


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## bswartzwelder

Richoc,

Where are you located that Nitric acid is only $7 per gallon?


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## rickbb

bswartzwelder said:


> Richoc,
> 
> Where are you located that Nitric acid is only $7 per gallon?



yeah, at that price I'll take 5 gallons.


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## FrugalRefiner

richoc said:


> But you would have been done in a week had you not just relied on your air bubbler for oxidation.
> It is in there for more for agitation, making the solution move and keeping the reaction running.
> You need to be adding more oxidizer all the time to jump start the reaction back up to full speed.


Rich, that's like telling someone that when they use a shot of starting fluid to start their engine in sub-zero weather, they need to keep spraying the stuff in while they're driving to keep their engine running at top speed. While it's true the stuff will make their engine race, it will cause them problems. The air bubbler doesn't just agitate the solution - it adds oxygen. Adding more hydrogen peroxide does exactly the same thing.



> There always is some left in solution to drop out later , I guess because we run the process hotter because we use way more oxidizer in process.


That's exactly the problem many beginners have when they keep adding peroxide. The idea of using AP is to dissolve the base metals before they dissolve their gold. You could also just dump the whole batch of pins in AR and dissolve the whole lot very quickly, but it's not the best approach.

If you have developed your own methods that work for you, that's great, but it's not good advice to give others.

Dave


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## butcher

I agree with FrugalRefiner here.

When using copper II chloride, adding too much oxidizer will become a problem, it is the copper II chloride that we are dissolving copper with (not the oxidizer, and the acid).
We may need to add HCl acid, and air (or a little 3% H2O2) to rejuvenate the copper II chloride as it becomes more of a copper I chloride solution, but these are not added to speed the reaction, or to make it dissolve copper faster...

Note: it is not HCl or H2O2 That we use to dissolve copper, these are used with copper to make copper II chloride.
It is actually the copper II chloride that we use to dissolve more copper.
We just add more acid or oxidizer as needed to keep the copper II chloride in a healthy state, so that will dissolve more copper, using the acid or oxidizer to convert CuCl back into CuCl2... 

Thin copper does not take too long to dissolve in this solution, but if the copper is thicker like with pins it will take longer, that is the nature of it, trying to speed it up with more acid or adding too much H2O2, will do more harm than good.

Temperature (within reason) can help some, to speed it up somewhat, or slow it down if the weather is too cold, but even this has to be done within reason, as it can be a double edge sword, some heat will help the reactions, but can also set up another set of problems.

Studying the documents on the copper II chloride leach found on Laser Steve's web site will help you get a better understanding of how this leach (or copper etching solution) works, and studying the forum will also help as it has been discussed in great depth.


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## richoc

I am in Milwaukee Wisconsin.
i buy diirect at a acid supply here in West Allis , a small Milwaukee town.
I get lab grade nitric acid at $7 a gallon at 5 gallons and up.
I have found no way to ship it with out paying a $50 
Haz. Mat fee to the shipper UPS that is.
Have a buddy that works in the office at FedEx and we can not even figure out if they would handle it.
Lab grade Sulfuric acid 68 degree is the same cost.

We have been stripping gold pins with AP for so long, I can not remember when it started.
Read my post I know the air bubbling through adds a tiny little bit of O2.
We run the same acid till it stops working, by feeding more peroxide each day some times 2x 3xs a day.
We run the air bubbles as high as possible to agitate the reaction, plus add a tiny bit of O2.
We use a real air compressor and run multiple tanks at a time off of it.
Tank could run on a larger fish tank air supply.
We have a AP tank design that works so sweet we could market them if there was a larger market.
My need is to get them done ASAP and get past the gold recovery method and on to refining it.

I think he did a great job I just hope to help speed up his next AP processing .


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## Geo

3% H2O2 is still enough to put gold into solution if you add it and there's not enough base metal to absorb it. That's why it's not recommended on the forum. It's your pins and chemicals, feel free to do with them whatever you want. The problem is many members come here with no knowledge of what copper(II) chloride is or what it can do. The problem here is in the name. AP is a true refining technique where gold is put into solution using hcl and hydrogen peroxide much like we use hcl/Cl (bleach). If we used copper(II) chloride in the description instead of AP, it may help some. As it is, beginners show up and want to do the fastest and simplest process for Escrap. If they find your post and follow it by adding H2O2 over and over, it will lead to problems and a thousand questions why.


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## richoc

It works faster way faster.......
The agitation of the air stirs the solution and moves the foils off the pins faster exposing the base metal be it just copper the better that way I get to recover some good copper later on.
The faster the acid can contact the basemetals the faster it works, but O2 from air supply totally inadequate for fast stripping of the gold plate.


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## richoc

Only using regular 3% house hold peroxide you can buy any where.

AP is a gold recovery method it is not a refining process.

It is a step in a longer process to get too refined gold.

It provides you the recovered gold plate at what ever karat it is , to then refine, or melt and cash in.


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## jason_recliner

_If only_ I could get 5 US gallons (is that 19 litres?) of nitric for $7 / gal + $50 postage! Where do I sign?! 
I think if I could access nitric acid at all, I'd probably pay that for about 100ml.

Loved following this entire thread by the way. It's very encouraging to see your six shiny babies.


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## butcher

richoc,
I do not think you understood what Geo (or others responding to your post) have been saying, or when Geo said that using HCl and H2O2 can be used as a refining process to dissolve gold.

Or what he was trying to get across, that adding too much peroxide (even very dilute peroxide) can put gold into solution if added too much volume, or added too often, or the peroxide is more concentrated...



It seems you do not understand what we are trying to tell you.
I understand you want to share what you are doing and learning, but many of the things you have been posting hinges on being wrong or misleading, we have spent a lot of time trying to help members learn, and to get them to understand, and when you post misleading information it just makes it harder for us to help those who read it, and do not know the difference.


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## Geo

Acid/peroxide (AP) is an old refining technique to put powders and fines into solution. Granted, the hydrogen peroxide was 35% concentration or higher. Higher concentrations are very dangerous because it is a strong oxidizer and fuming hydrogen peroxide is explosive. Metallurgist and jewelers used hcl and concentrated hydrogen peroxide to dissolve fine gold waste. This is not some tale I made up to scare children to sleep at night, it is a fact. The way we use acid/peroxide is a work-around method pioneered by members of the forum. Like butcher said earlier, it's not the hcl or peroxide that puts the copper into solution, it's the copper(II) chloride in the presence of free oxygen. When you bubble air through copper(II) chloride, oxygen from the air is dissolved into the solution. This oxygen is what drives the reaction forward. Not everyone has this knowledge and they come here to learn, We try to teach them the science behind the reactions so that they understand what is happening and why. We also try to not say any one method is better than another or that any particular way of doing it is any better than another way. We encourage people to experiment and find the way that's best for them. Members that are experienced know that H2O2 and hcl will dissolve gold. There is a prescribed method that we promote for using AP on the forum and for you to say that your way is better than the way the forum teaches it, we would say, prove it. Of coarse you can't because we already know that hcl and H2O2 will dissolve gold prematurely causing new members to misplace or lose their hard work and their gold. You can fix it by simply stating that, it's your opinion that your way is better and not stating it as a fact.


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## richoc

Ok I will except that because our fix is to let it sit in a 5 gallon bucket, when the bucket gets full we test for gold. 
SMB filter the drop and use the solution until it is super dark blue.
Then we go after the copper and all other metals we can get out.

The AP tank we use has a lid on it but has a few lines though it .
One or 2 are the in coming air which releases under the pin chamber for noi better word. The other line is over flow and venting,this leads up to a collection / over flow container and then next and last the venting goes in to a filter chamber.
Sealed system and washed and charcoal filtered exhast.
Like I said we could sell meets all law here in a regulation nuts town.

We all have Israille issue gas masks to ware ,when needed like when pouring any Nitric acid.


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## richoc

Refiners I think my acid prices are low because this area has or did have tons of plating shops, most doing car bumbers and motor cycle parts.

They know me ,they know I have 2 college degrees,they know my father, I call ahead and I pay at time of pick up.
Some times I pay for a new contianer when needed.

So if I ship one gallon sealed, bag sealed in a box UPS ground there is a $50 up front Hazmat charge.
No flying this stuff around. 

If I could find a better way ,I would start a acid supply house and start shipping all over.

Rich


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## Geo

You could almost double the price of the nitric per gallon and charge $10 for the nitric per gallon and $50 hazmat for shipping. $60 per gallon is steep but I bet you would stay busy with it.

Here, nitric acid is $199.99 for 10L or 2.64 gallons.Of coarse it comes in 2.5L bottles.


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## kurtak

Geo said:


> Here, nitric acid is $199.99 for 10L or 2.64 gallons.Of coarse it comes in 2.5L bottles.



:shock: 
That's just crazy - I can buy nitric for about $3.50 a gallon in a 15 gallon keg (looks just like a beer keg) there is a $200.00 deposit on the keg but thats no big problem because I bring it home & transfer the acid into my own barrel & then return theirs for my deposit back

Kurt


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