# 6 Month Lurker Success



## Emmjae (Jan 15, 2011)

Hi Everyone,

After 6 months of reading and searching and reading and searching and reading on this forum, I finally got the guts enough to try melting my first button tonight from all my combined gold powders that I refined from fingers and pins. Thanks to all the great folks on this forum and Steve for all his great DVD's and info on his website. I'm 50 years old and knew absolutely nothing about chemistry or recovering and refining PM's until I stumbled upon this forum and now I have a hobby that I just can't get enough of. Also need to thank my wonderful Wife that has stood behind me on my new hobby venture 100% and allowing me to take over 2 rooms in our house....lol. I hope to be a little less silent in the future as I would love to help out where I can and feel I actually have some hands on experience with recovering and refining e-scrap.

My first button weighed in at 10.45 grams and hoping the purity is good too. Was happy to see my melting dish was fairly clean when I was finished so doing all those washing has payed off :mrgreen: . I think I should have kept the heat on it for a bit longer because the pipe I see in most everyone's buttons didn't quite form on mine. Will be shopping for a better torch for my next melt.

Again, thank you everyone and I would like to hear your comments.

Mike


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## Anonymous (Jan 15, 2011)

Don't sweat the pipe issue.Sometimes a pipe forms,sometimes it doesn't.I've remelted buttons many times,sometimes a pipe forms sometimes it doesn't.A friend of mine sent me a 1 ounce button that had a HUGE pipe,but appeared to have a tiny bit of contamination(I have pictures) when I remelted it in flux to get out some of the contaminants,there was no pipe.You get the idea.If you just want to see a pipe on your nugget,try remelting it a couple of times,trying not to overheat it.
Oh I almost forgot........beautiful nugget!And yes it does look pretty darn pure.Congrats


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## joem (Jan 15, 2011)

very nice mike, congratulations and great work


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## eeTHr (Jan 15, 2011)

MJ---

Beautiful button.

Thanks for posting the pictures, and the story behind it.


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## Platdigger (Jan 16, 2011)

Beautiful!


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## philddreamer (Jan 16, 2011)

Good job Mike!!! 8)


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## samuel-a (Jan 16, 2011)

Great work Mike.

patience is a virtue.

I re-refined my first buttons to get the hang of what it's like to work with concentrated gold solutions in case I'll be working with jewelry in the future (and i do now), it's a whole new world.

Good luck


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## goldenchild (Jan 16, 2011)

Excellent.


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## patnor1011 (Jan 16, 2011)

What I see here is a very good job. Mainly in sense that you invest great deal of your time to study and educate yourself instead of jumping straight in and drown in questions which are answered here many times anyway.


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## goldenchild (Jan 16, 2011)

patnor1011 said:


> What I see here is a very good job. Mainly in sense that you invest great deal of your time to study and educate yourself instead of jumping straight in and drown in questions which are answered here many times anyway.


Truth. How many people show up with a gold button without asking any questions? 8)


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## Emmjae (Jan 17, 2011)

Thanks for the insight Mic, I won't sweat the pipe issue then. Also, thank you to everyone else for the great comments. You have boosted my confidence and I'm looking forward to doing more. Next button I hope to make it a full troy ounce. :mrgreen:


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## Harold_V (Jan 18, 2011)

Emmjae said:


> I won't sweat the pipe issue then.


Congratulations on your success. 

Don't dismiss the issue with the pipe. Impure gold won't form one, and if it forms, it's generally very shallow. 

A reasonable test for you is to examine the surface of your button carefully. If you see a tiny crystaline structure, that's a pretty good sign you have a trace (very little) of something in the gold. The color in the dish indicates there is----the ring should have no color unless it is shades of pink or purple (colloidal gold). 

Very pure gold will often develop a huge crystal pattern, but the area within the pattern is bright and shiny. Any discoloration on the surface is an indicator of contamination---and the one that's very telling is when the gold is molten. If it remains bright when molten, it's pure. If it forms a surface skin that constantly moves to the sides of the button, where it's absorbed by the flux in the dish, it's contaminated. Many melt with a full flux cover, which hides (but does not address) the problem.

Not being critical of your accomplishment---just a heads-up for future melting. 

If you have the least doubt about the purity, and you'd like it very pure, it's easy enough to refine a second time, or, if need be, a third time. 

Well done!

Harold
Edit: 
A comment on forming the pipe. 
If you control cooling, it's very possible to create buttons or ingots that have no pipe, even with ultra pure gold. All that is required is to keep the surface of the gold mass molten, allowing it to cool from the bottom, up. By doing so, molten gold fills the area that shrinks from solidification. In such an example, the surface generally slopes inward slightly to the center.


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## glorycloud (Jan 18, 2011)

Very nice!

I do see some rings of gold in the dish like the rings of Saturn. 8) 

I get them as well. My question is for the pros. Can that be controlled
somehow or is it just the nature of what we do?

I have read that when the crucible gets old and cracked, you can
recover that gold from the flux when the dish has outlived it's 
useful life.

Thanks!


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## Emmjae (Jan 18, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> If it remains bright when molten, it's pure. If it forms a surface skin that constantly moves to the sides of the button, where it's absorbed by the flux in the dish, it's contaminated. .



This makes sense to me now. When my gold was in a molten state there was a very small spot that kept rolling to the sides. I was assuming my torch wasn't hot enough when I couldn't make it disappear. Thanks for the info Harold. I'll do another refining in the future when I have some more gold powder to go with it.

Mike


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## Harold_V (Jan 19, 2011)

glorycloud said:


> Very nice!
> 
> I do see some rings of gold in the dish like the rings of Saturn. 8)
> 
> ...


Simple. It's a sign of contamination of sorts. When gold is pure, there is nothing to form the rings. Note that the ring in the picture posted is not a clear color, but shades of gray. Any color aside from pink or purple is a sign of contamination. It may not be much, but it's there. 

When I melted my gold, I got a purple/pink dish---nothing more---and I never claimed purity beyond 9997. It doesn't take much to form the discoloration, especially if the molten gold is held at temperature for a period of time. In a sense, it is slowly eliminating the contamination, which is absorbed by the flux in the dish. That, of course, happens only if the gold is exposed to an oxygen rich environment, so the contamination is oxidized. If it isn't, it won't be absorbed by the borax. 



> I have read that when the crucible gets old and cracked, you can recover that gold from the flux when the dish has outlived it's useful life.


I posted, long ago, on cleaning melting dishes. Some of what I had to say has been disputed, but the hard fact is when you add soda ash to very dirty and sticky flux, color changes and metal that was previously unseen forms. That tells me that soda ash is, by some means, reducing oxides, which then act as a collector for any values that may be present. With the use of a soda ash and borax flux mixture, then pouring to a small (assayer's) cone mold, any values that may be present are readily recovered. This process should be done in a fume hood, for a lot of smoke is created. 

Harold


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