# jewelry melt slag



## irvtemes (Jun 8, 2016)

over the past 20 years I have accumulated about 100-200 lbs of slag from doing jewelry scrap melts and I would like to send this slag to an honorable dealer/ person to recover any precious metals and diamonds. looking at the older slag there appears to be a lot of small diamonds and maybe some gold, I think later the refiners started adding sodium nitrate to the melts and the color and consistently changed. Any suggestions how to process and what i should expect? Thank you in advance. Traditionally my melts average 55% purity.


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## irvtemes (Jun 8, 2016)

question--- if 1000 grams of jewelry scrap is melted to pour a dore bar and take a sample for assaying was done twice.................(1) lot in a gas fired furnace and (1) lot in an electric induction furnace................will the pin samples and recovery be the same? also. can anyone recommend a metallurist to me ?


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## GOLDbuyerCA (Jun 8, 2016)

Run your request by me "us" one more time please, You, have accumulated 20 years of metals? and left out your value of going from 300 an oz. to 1850 an oz/ and now you want to recover ? 
you say you "May have gold " to 55 percent, " myself i have recovered from a diamond gold. seller, and even with 18 K, in the mix, the recovered was much less than 55 percent. can you explain what your starting material was / is ? 
interesting, you being in the biz. and Not knowing a metallurgist . excuse me, but something just caught my funny bone, reading your request. i do not see what state you are in, Vancouver is most often, so far away from forum members. i have the ability to help, but at the moment, with out your clarification, i will just pass. and read the thread. Cheers.


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## goldnboy (Jun 9, 2016)

Sir, there is no additional information that would possibly enable you, or anyone else to accurately access the potential value of the metal retained in your slag accumulation unless you were to run it through a proper preliminary sampling scenario involving a uniform reduction to the size of all pieces of slag and then follow a proper sampling technique to produce a "potentially" representative sample that would need to be run for full metal recovery. Anyone willing to do that work for you without invoicing you a rather hefty charge is nobody you should trust. Because the reality of it is that for not a whole lot more money they could probably have run the entire 200 lbs for nearly the same money.
The issue you're having has to do strictly with trust. What's wrong with the refiner you used for the last 20 years you trusted to run all your Karat Gold scrap?
Yes it helps to know that your Karat Gold melts were running in the typical 50% range. But if you had run several larger melts of lower grade Gold-Filled or Sterling Silver material that accounts for a high percentage of the total slag weight it is certainly relevant. Also, lets make it clear that the refiner starting to add Sodium Nitrate to the flux is irrelevant in determining how to proceed going forward at this point. The key questions you need to ask yourself are: Is the quantity of White Melee you left in your melt lots over the years significant assuming the most value you'll ever see out of them coming out of slag $30/carat. Colored stones are irrelevant. If the answer is no you can find a refiner or smelter to re-melt your slag in one extremely hot heat with the addition of Soda Ash to thin down the material and pour it into a Cone mold. An experienced melting technician should be able to get you up to 85-90% of whatever metal was retained from your additional melt. This can be done in less than a day with a large 500lb. furnace, and some companies will let you be present to witness this melt. However at this point your stones are trashed. The other processing option to recover both stones and metallics typically requires very aggressive boiling of the slag in a mild dilute acid solution for what can be long periods of time in specialized steel vessels. This is not a process that lends itself to personally watching over, so once again it comes back to your issue of trust. Good luck with your decision.


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## goldnboy (Jun 9, 2016)

Sorry, there is one more thing I forgot to mention to the gentlemen asking about slag recovery.
If you think your going to get rich off this material I will caution you to not get your hopes up. If you see 2 or 3 ounces of pure come out of this amount of material you should be overjoyed.


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## irvtemes (Jun 9, 2016)

Firstly,
Thank you to everyone who replied and will reply in the future. I will answer some questions that were asked and/ or comments made by members who are much more knowledgeable than me.
1. I am only talking about slag from gold jewelry scrap lot that average about 55% purity.........no silver or low karat melt slag......only karat scrap
2. I have used multiple refiners over the past 20 years , some of which are no longer in business. I currently use two refiners, one has a electric induction furnace and the other has a gas fired furnace and this is why I asked the question about power source for a jewelry melt ............ would both refiners get the same results even with different power sources for melting. Both of the refiners are in the Northeast and they just do the melt and assay and pay me 99% of pin sample assay and I believe they both just send the dore bars to Melltalor and make the difference, they also pay 80% for recovered silver.
3. In visually looking at the older slag you can see sparkles which are for sure some diamonds.
4. I do not expect to get rich from this but want to have oe processed and recover something, it is possible the diamonds may be worth more than the metal

Thanks again everyone


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## justinhcase (Jun 9, 2016)

How can all these people get 99% spot for unprocessed alloy. I had a chap from Paris wanting a similar deal on silver last week.
He insisted he was being offered 97% spot for Ag.
I told him to take there hand off at the wrist. seemed surprised I told him to go for it and good luck.
I work my butt off, get thing's to 999Au and still only get 98.5% spot, well in fact after a number of years I have been offered 99% by other dealers.
But my chap was good with me when the others would not return my calls ,so I will not haggle with a dependable fellow over a 0.5.
my suspicions is that any one offering 99% for unprocessed alloy may well be making things up else where.
It is better to pay for honest service than accept the high offer of a car sales man.
I have to wonder are these people actually doing the math's for them self's or getting an independent opinion. 
If you do not tip and treat your waiter well the next time you eat there you will lightly get an extra side order of saliva.
Look after those you depend on for honesty very well and they will look after you, cut them to the bone and they will cut you back.


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## 4metals (Jun 9, 2016)

> How can all these people get 99% spot for unprocessed alloy.



It is all about volume, the refiners offering 1% are not processing in house but sending out to a major refiner and getting rates better than the 1% they charge. Depending on their volume shipped to the major, it can add up to a decent profit for just melt assay and ship. If they are large enough and have the ability to hedge their metal they are not at risk of price fluctuations because they lock in the price when they settle your lot.


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## 4metals (Jun 9, 2016)

irvtemes

From an ease of recovery standpoint, just melting with a thinning flux as goldnboy said is the best route. I would be adding flurospar as well to thin the flux. You can stand there and watch it and you can look at the flux after the melt and see how effective the melt was, and you will see your metal sitting in the point of a cone mold the same day. 

The other option is the dissolving of the slags. This can take some time and while I am not a diamond expert, I have never seen a whole lot of diamonds come out of slag. Since you were the gold buyer who shipped these lots to a refiner, you know what kind of stones you passed on as not worth it the first time. If they weren't worth it then, why now?

So what I would do is take a random sample out of your slag pile, get maybe a pound or so, and put it in a heavy pot and boil it hard in water. The majority of the borax will dissolve in a few hours. Pour off the water while still hot and if you need it repeat. When you are done you will have dissolved 90-95% of the borax and be left with any metal and those precious stones you seek. You can pick them out and evaluate them for price and carats per pound of slag on average. If it is a good number, repeat the sampling process and re-do the test. If you get similar results twice, good or bad, you know if it's worth going for the diamonds or just melting and collecting the gold. Remember your results are only as good as your sample, mix it well and take as random a sample as you can. Don't look for good promising chunks and take them because your results will skew higher and you will end up disappointed when the entire lot is run. Totally random sampling.


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## justinhcase (Jun 9, 2016)

4metals said:


> > How can all these people get 99% spot for unprocessed alloy.
> 
> 
> 
> It is all about volume, the refiners offering 1% are not processing in house but sending out to a major refiner and getting rates better than the 1% they charge. Depending on their volume shipped to the major, it can add up to a decent profit for just melt assay and ship. If they are large enough and have the ability to hedge their metal they are not at risk of price fluctuations because they lock in the price when they settle your lot.


In such arrangement's I have noted that the handling/processing fee's and the Assay fee are quite generous.
I do not have to pay any fees ,every thing I produce is bought outright with out assay, I thought with those added cost's It has to be quite a sizable lot to beat a straight 10% toll and definitely a figure above what they say they are being paid. £1 for every £100's material processed seems a bit low to me knowing the cost of just keeping the door's open and the light's on.
It would be informative if when people mention offers you could look at the fine print of the service in question, But I suppose that would mean they could not play there card's close to there chest.
I have a feeling that some with smaller lot's may have heard about the better rates and naturally try to get them.


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## 4metals (Jun 9, 2016)

Justin,

The major refiners are playing every angle on the material they receive. They are bankers and charge to finance any advances of metal you take on your lot, they also get to keep and small amounts of precious metals which are below their payable limits, and yes they do charge for assay. But they are taking in large lots so their percentage charges can be well below that 1% because they make it up elsewhere. 

Refiners doing toll refining are in a niche market, catering to the small seller who realizes it is cheaper to toll refine than to risk the total of all charges a typical refiner would charge. And having refined myself, you would never cease to be amazed at what people bring in to be refined. To take in that material in a business with substantial overhead without all of the charges is suicidal. And the refiner doesn't want 100 grams of mixed scrap, and you would be swamped with a 1000 ounce high karat lot to refine yourself. So everybody gets to work their own niche.


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## alexxx (Jun 9, 2016)

justinhcase said:


> It is better to pay for honest service than accept the high offer of a car sales man.



Very true

Sadly, the vast majority of the refiners out there will post big numbers on the returns and skim a lot from the top.


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## justinhcase (Jun 9, 2016)

"you would be swamped with a 1000 ounce high karat lot to refine yourself."
I know,I can only fit 20kilo's of an alloy at a time in my vessels and my personal best recovery was only 674.2gAu.  
Still That is the kind of Life Problem I have always wanted to have.swamped in Gold,you could paly scrooge McDuck for a day :lol: 
Thank you for your help and education.


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## irvtemes (Jun 10, 2016)

would the return be different if the gold scrap was melted by a gas furnace as compared to an electric induction furnace?


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## irvtemes (Jun 10, 2016)

just for the record, I have three sources that I can use for a melt and assay and after lot charges of about $125 I can get 99%, 99.2% plus silver from two of them respectively and one , the largest has offered me 99.6% on M&A with no fees 48 hr. turn around, this company is a true refiner not a broker like the first two


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## nickvc (Jun 10, 2016)

On solid scraps induction works the best as it mixes the metals but a good melter can work with a gas furnace, with this amount of old flux to run it would ruin the pots of an induction furnace and they do not come cheap so your charges may well be higher plus with induction it works well with metals not flux.
Take 4metals advice and treat the flux as he advised, that way you can sort the diamonds and gold out and just get a melt done on the metals.
If you decide to just melt the lot then get the flux crushed or ball milled, diamonds should make it through largely undamaged, and you can just sieve them out.


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## nickvc (Jun 10, 2016)

Justin the reason that some people offer silly terms on silver is that there is vat on silver and certain individuals are happy to scam the vatman and not pay it on, it is like the old gold scam.


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## justinhcase (Jun 10, 2016)

nickvc said:


> Justin the reason that some people offer silly terms on silver is that there is vat on silver and certain individuals are happy to scam the vatman and not pay it on, it is like the old gold scam.


I was aware that it should have VAT attached once you turn over more then £75k of Ag a year, but did not think of something as basic as a VAT scam.
There is Nothing like dealing with an honest refiner A.
If they are effectively ripping off every citizen in the country I wonder how they treat there clients.
Thanks Nick


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## nickvc (Jun 10, 2016)

I was asked to sell 100s of kilos of silver for cash which I refused because I knew who was making the money and how and wanted no part of it.
They will pay over spot in cash for the silver, sell it on invoice and pocket the vat.
Same scam on platinum too, infact any high value items, phones was another good one and I believe computer chips, the vat man has seen it all, I saw the platinum diamond encrusted Rolex watches from one of the beggars they caught!


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