# Using Sodium Meta Bisulfite - SMB



## lazersteve (May 10, 2007)

Post your comments and questions to this tutorial here.

Here's the tutorial link:

Click Me


Steve


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 10, 2007)

Sweet tutorial.. got a question or two...

A) Is there a home product that contains SMB that you use or do you use pure SMB and where can you get it?

B) Tin powder (from the Auric Chloride tutorial), where do you get that as well?.. 

Thanks man!
Derek

PS: keep up the great work!.. it does not go unappreciated!


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## lazersteve (May 10, 2007)

Mayhem,

I bought my SMB at http://www.thechemistrystore.com , 10# for $25 plus shipping.


The tin powder was purchased on ebay.

Search for Item number: 7612501885, sellers name is FinePowder

Steve


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## toadiesop (May 11, 2007)

Mayhem, If you are around a home brewing (beer and wine) store, they will have your SMB. I work in a brewpub and we have a little store that carries SMB. It's used in the wine making process. We sell it $2.50 for 8 ounces.

If sure you can't find some locally, check out the FOR SALE section and talk to Hollywood (PRECIOUS METALS)


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 11, 2007)

thanks, man.. yeah actually there is a brewery place up here I was thinking of checking out, glad to hear I was on the right path..


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## Paige (May 12, 2007)

What would be the largest amount of 14kt yellow gold jewelry that you would refine using the bleach route as opposed to A.R.?

Time is NOT of the essence.

Thank you.

Paige

About a year ago I was using AR to refine and had added my urea. I thought everything was fine. I then added SMB and the whole thing over flowed like a fountain. The other "Steve" surmised that I had not gotten my nitric completely killed and when I added SMB it reacted violently.

Needless to say, I would appreciate anything not using nitric which has to be "killed" by adding another step/element.


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 12, 2007)

I may be mistaken, but I thought Steve said in the tutorial, this method was best for foils (like from fingers and pins).. Actually, I was wondering if you could do Karat gold with it, myself, but I thought I remember him mentioning it attacks mainly the surface.... maybe "shotting" your Karat gold and then doing it?.. (Steve, am I on the right track here?)

Actually I have one of those manual hand crank jewelry rollers I was going to ask Steve about using.. so, Steve, could I (at least in theory) run Karat gold through my rollers or "hammer it out" until it's realllllly thin, a couple mils or so and then use the HCL/Clorox method?..


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## AgAuPtRh (May 12, 2007)

You could use a roller mayhem. some don't agree with the idea but I have read about it. Hoke and E A Smith both mention it is a viable option. 

The acids used to refine the gold need as much surface area as possible to digest the material quickly. From what I gather you could "granulate your karat values -- or you could roll your karat values or you could inquart your karat values. THe choice is up to you. 

Granulating means heating and pouring your molten material in water. This makes small bb's, shot, cornflakes whatever you want to call them. And also increases the surface area the acid has to work on. 

Rolling or hammering your karat gold does pretty much the same thing. Increases surface area allowing the acids to work faster and to have a more complete reaction. Whatever you roll out make sure to twist it some so it wont lay flat in your container. 

Lazersteve did a tutorial on inquarting. ??? I think ?? or showed some pics and gave details from Goldsilverppro and Harold V . I think it's in the help need section. Getting gold shining 


The point is that whatever you are digesting in a chemical solution -- you want the best performance from your acids that they can give you. Breaking, smashing, rolling, hammering, granulating, -- whatever you have the means to use -- not all of us have furnaces and a laboratory. We sometimes need to improvise. Granulating would most likely be your best option --rolling would follow a close second and the rest could be the cause for losses.


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 12, 2007)

awesome.. yeah I was thinking rolling might be a viable option for that reason, not to mention you can get it very thin as opposed to the bb's which although small can be kinda thick.. a couple millimeters thick as opposed to a few thousandths of an inch thick with rolling..


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## lazersteve (May 12, 2007)

Mayhem said:


> Actually I have one of those manual hand crank jewelry rollers I was going to ask Steve about using.. so, Steve, could I (at least in theory) run Karat gold through my rollers or "hammer it out" until it's realllllly thin, a couple mils or so and then use the HCL/Clorox method?..



Yes, as AgAuPtRh stated this is a viable option, though in my opinion not optimal. The reason is because we are talking about KARAT gold not nearly pure gold. For this reason I would recommend AgAuPtRh's second proposed method.. inquartation.. followed by the HCl-Cl dissolution.

It may be an interesting test to see how well the HCl-Cl method works on the thin karated foil. :idea: The HCl-Cl method will form silver chloride as a fine white percipitate . I remove mine by diluting followed by filtering. A purple barrier layer may form if the silver content is high, this will most likely occur with 10kt to 18 kt scrap. This purple layer is a real pain and should be avoided by proper inquarting.

We all know that AR is the fastest way to attack the gold, but the alternative methods are *very effective* and much safer in my opinion. The HCl-Cl method is proving it's worth to me as I use it more frequently. I like the fact that it is very clean and requires so few additional chemicals. I plan on expanding the process to include an inquartation step that doesn't require nitric acid. This will remove the need for nitric from the process completely. 

If you are using the crockpot with HCl or the Acid Peroxide bath to produce your gold flake you already have the nitric free process in place. The karat and gold filled items are still dependent upon nitric for the inquarting phase... more on this later.


Steve


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## goldsilverpro (May 12, 2007)

*Rolling.* I definitely recommend rolls for karat gold. Motorized rolls are, of course, much better. The trick for fast dissolving is high surface area. If you were to roll a 1 ounce cube of gold to even 20 mils thick, you would have about 20 square inches of surface area. On the other hand, if you were to shot this same ounce of gold to 1/8" spheres, pretty small, you would only have 5 square inches. This means that the 20 mil rolled gold will dissolve 4 times faster than 1/8" shot.

When rolling, you'll end up with a long strip. The 20 mil strip above would be 20" long by .45" wide. Coil the strip in a spiral shape, without anything touching, and place it in the bottom of your dissolving container.

Rolling the gold is much, much faster than shotting. Sometimes, when rolling gold with lead in it, the gold is brittle and it crumbles to pieces with good surface area.


*Shotting*. If you shot and, if you have nitric, you may as well inquart and end up with purer gold. 

Getting high surface shot is not as easy it sounds. The container must be stainless and it should be tall enough so that the gold is solid by the time it hits the bottom. Otherwise, it will glob up and, it could stick to the bottom. The object is to get the highest possible surface area. There are several ways of achieving this. 

The first is "Popcorn". See the photo. Harold can best describe this.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=325&start=60

I usually use one of these three. They tend to produce a small flat, high surface area shot:

1) The old standard is to place a board nearly flat in the water, a few inches deep, and pour the gold onto the board.

2) My favorite. One time we were shotting karat gold in a stainless restaurant container, about 6-8"square X 24" deep and, we were getting big shot and clumps. I carved a propeller, about 4" long, out of hardwood. I drilled a hole it it and mounted it to a length of all-thread with two nuts and two lock nuts, tightened pretty good. I chucked it in a drill and had someone hold it about 6", or less, under the water. I then poured the gold directly into the prop. I got the smallest shot I have ever seen.

3) Handy & Harman used this method. They had two water inlets near the bottom of the vessel, set to make the water swirl. The water continually overflowed.


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 12, 2007)

goldsilverpro said:


> 2) My favorite. One time we were shotting karat gold in a stainless restaurant container, about 6-8"square X 24" deep and, we were getting big shot and clumps. I carved a propeller, about 4" long, out of hardwood. I drilled a hole it it and mounted it to a length of all-thread with two nuts and two lock nuts, tightened pretty good. I chucked it in a drill and had someone hold it about 6", or less, under the water. I then poured the gold directly into the prop. I got the smallest shot I have ever seen.


 
* "Brilliant!!" *


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 12, 2007)

Holy JESUS!..caught a real good wiff of what was going on after putting the SMB mix in the Auric I made .. I think next time I'd rather just be punched in the face :lol: :lol: (at least I wouldn't have to worry about whether I received a toxic dose or not :shock: ).. This was done outside with a fan blowing on the bowl (away from me).. my mistake?.. I leaned in to take a look and see if any change was happening as I mixed it in.. ok.. lessons learned.. 

Anyways, I think it was Auric.. It barely had any color change with the "Stannous Chloride" I mixed, but I don't trust my attempts at the Stannous because I used a "lead free" solder.. to make a long story short, I asked the guy at Lowes for 95/5 solder and he handed me "Lead free" solder, he said typically it's 95/5, but it didn't say it on the label... anyways, we'll see what I get in the morning after it has a chance to settle out...

Derek


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## austexjwlry (Jun 17, 2007)

goldsilverpro

You're absolutely right about motorized rolling mills, my manual durston is slow, slow. The around 1lb of silver rod shaped ingots at base of mill in picture will take me all day to convert to wire for silver bands. Where I melted the silver in 1 1/2 hrs & poured to ingots. Could have made shot in even less time.
I use a small glass blowing torch, a Nortel minor bench burner but other small bench burners as just as good!
I use a heavy duty commercial aluminum pan to make grain, have never scorched bottom but have scorched the bottom of lighter stainless pans I use. One of the secrets of smaller shot is to add ice to water, the colder the better.

Wayne


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## lazersteve (Jul 2, 2007)

Kory,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for the post.

The SMB tutorial requires four key ingredients:


Auric Chloride in solution. This can be formed by dissolving gold via any one of several methods mentioned here on the forum. Check out the reactions list for more details. Here is a link to that list:

General Reactions

Stannous Chloride test solution. See the above mentioned reactions list for instructions on how to make this. Use this to test the left over solution for the presence of any remaining traces of gold.

Water. Tap or distilled will work equally well. Use his to dissolve the SMB before adding it to the Auric Chloride.

Sodium Metabisulfite. SMB drops the gold from the solution by producing SO2 gas in the solution.

I hope this is what you are looking for.

Steve


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## scavenger (Jul 2, 2007)

I did a batch of HCL/CL on hollowed celeron cpu pins. It dissolved the lot. I added way more SMB than required as I couldn't get the result shown in the video (solution clears than starts to drop) even though I followed the instructions. My solution stayed a gold color. I gave up and went to bed. The next morning there was a lot of very fine light brown dust gathered in the bottom of my jar. I hope this is the gold and not copper. Is it possible to use too much SMB? and does water dilution affect the precipitation? The HCL/CL method is brilliant. I had a good precipitation when doing foils the first time. Went just like the video. Maybe the cpu gold is of poorer/higher quality and therefore precipitates slower.


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## lazersteve (Jul 2, 2007)

Scavenger,

Sounds like you may have used a little too much Clorox. I recommend using just enough Clorox to affect the dissolution of the foils. Any excess will produce additional Cl2 gas which will redissolve the gold as it's precipitated. I let the Auric Chloride sit overnight in a ventilated area to dissipate any excess Cl2. Sunlight or gentle heating should assist in driving off the excess Cl2 before dropping the gold. 

I really like this method because it drops so cleanly. Plus the chemicals are easily accessible. Did you take any photos? 

I'm working on a very interesting new method that's sure to turn some heads. :wink: 

Steve


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## scavenger (Jul 2, 2007)

That makes sense to me. I think I did over do it. Heres what it looks like 18 hours after precip.


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## lazersteve (Jul 2, 2007)

Looks like some of your gold may have adhered to the sides of the jar. Be sure to test the spent solution with fresh stannous chloride to verify all the gold has dropped. 

Great job!

Steve


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