# Removing gold from stainless steel jewelry



## Rednight (Feb 8, 2016)

I recently purchased a large amount of charms that are used for making bracelets. They are stainless steel and 18k. They are not plated, just a small piece of gold on the front of ever piece. I would like to remove the gold from them, but every site I visited only talked about plating and not actual gold with some content. I would say each piece has about .1-.2 grams on it. I was thinking of just melting the piece and trying to separate it but I'm worried that it would bind it together. Please help. I'm a beginner. Thank you in advance.


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## nickvc (Feb 8, 2016)

Welcome to the forum.
Do not try melting them it will cause a bigger and more expensive mess.
When you say large quantity how much do you mean?
You can try dissolving enough of the stainless using HCl that does work or put them into HCl and add small increments of nitric so as to dissolve the gold and leave the stainless mainly untouched, the last method does require good ventilation or a fume hood.


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## butcher (Feb 8, 2016)

Being your first post, I would say do a whole lot of study before you do anything with chemicals, not only to get more understanding, but to keep yourself breathing healthy.


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## g_axelsson (Feb 8, 2016)

Melting steel is a lot harder than melting gold and it would only alloy if you did. But melting with silver as a collector could dissolve the gold in the silver while the iron would not dissolve. Silver and iron doesn't alloy.

If the iron is washed in nitric acid any gold containing silver would be dissolved and gold as a fine mud could be filtered off.
When all the charms are processed and the gold is collected by the molten silver, the silver could be dissolved in nitric, leaving the gold behind as a fine mud.

Disclaimer, I have never tested this procedure, I have no access to your scrap and I don't have a furnace to even try melting scrap like this. What I wrote above is just what I would try if I had the scrap and equipment.

Another way might be via the sulfuric cell, 18k could be enough gold for it to work, especially if there is some silver in the alloy too. Same disclaimer here too, I don't know anything about your scrap and I haven't tried running 18k scrap in a sulfuric cell.

You really should do a lot of reading on the forum about any method you want to try, about safety and treatment of wastes. No disclaimer on that statement.

Göran


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## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 8, 2016)

g_axelsson said:


> Melting steel is a lot harder than melting gold and it would only alloy if you did. But melting with silver as a collector could dissolve the gold in the silver while the iron would not dissolve. Silver and iron doesn't alloy.
> 
> If the iron is washed in nitric acid any gold containing silver would be dissolved and gold as a fine mud could be filtered off.
> When all the charms are processed and the gold is collected by the molten silver, the silver could be dissolved in nitric, leaving the gold behind as a fine mud.
> ...



A sulfuric cell will not work on karat gold.


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## FrugalRefiner (Feb 8, 2016)

Reverse AR would be my first thought, but that's not a process for a beginner. As Nick asked, what kind of quantity are you talking about. It might be worth having it toll refined by someone with more experience.

Dave


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## resabed01 (Feb 8, 2016)

I think I know what charms you're talking about but without a picture, I'm not sure. The ones I'm thinking of are spring loaded and link together to make bracelets.
I've been collecting these as I often find them in the bulk jewelry lots I buy
The small piece of karat gold looks to be soldered to the stainless. 
I haven't processed these yet but if were, I would try to separate the gold from the stainless.
With a pair of needle nose or side cutters, I would open up the charm and give it a hard flex to see if the gold will pop off.
If I was lucky enough to have thousands to process, I would look for a way to attack the solder so the gold would fall off.
Heat from a propane torch might be the better way to go.


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## nickvc (Feb 8, 2016)

If it's soldered to the stainless some of the gold solder will have penetrated the stainless, maybe not much but if your talking lots of them it all adds up.


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## upcyclist (Feb 8, 2016)

resabed01 said:


> The small piece of karat gold looks to be soldered to the stainless.
> I haven't processed these yet but if were, I would try to separate the gold from the stainless.
> With a pair of needle nose or side cutters, I would open up the charm and give it a hard flex to see if the gold will pop off.
> If I was lucky enough to have thousands to process, I would look for a way to attack the solder so the gold would fall off.
> Heat from a propane torch might be the better way to go.


I was thinking the exact same thing as soon as you said "looks to be soldered". I wonder if a good long soak in nitric would attack the solder? If it's true 18K solder then probably not, but it might work if they're using something else (i.e., something with less gold). 

Keep in mind that your solder may also contain *cadmium*! If not, it may use indium.


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 8, 2016)

I have no idea what type solder would be used to solder 18K to stainless but, in any case, the melting point of the solder would be considerably lower than the typical 18K yellow melting point of 1700F. If gold solder was used, the melting point of the solder would likely be around 1300-1400F.

Can you melt just the solder and then pluck off or flick off the 18K piece? It would help to see a photo.

________________________///__________________________

I would think this combo would be quite similar to gold filled on stainless watch bands. I would certainly do a search for this. I'm thinking there were some good ideas presented


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## nickvc (Feb 9, 2016)

Chris I suspect that if these items were made in the 10-100 thousands that they were laser welded to each other for speed and reliability, hand soldering each would take too much time unless they used karat braze pastes and fed them onto belt furnaces, if the OP has a large quantity I suspect he could spend a very long time heating each piece to the temperature needed to break the bond and I suspect leave some of the solder still on or mixed with the stainless.
If you had a few the amount left or the time probably wouldn't matter but if you had thousands your leaving a wedge of gold there.
This appears to be a similar problem as jet blades where the joins are 18k-20k soldered together using I suspect braze pastes and belt furnaces to cure the solder properly and accurately to the metal or strips of solder are welded to the blades but either way you can't just separate the gold from the metal by heat.


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 9, 2016)

It's difficult making suggestions without seeing good photos.


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## nickvc (Feb 9, 2016)

goldsilverpro said:


> It's difficult making suggestions without seeing good photos.



Agreed and with no response from the OP to any of the comments,questions or suggestions.


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## NitrogenERbiumDYsprosium (Jan 9, 2022)

I know this thread is old, but I also need to remove 18K from stainless steel charms. Bending them to pop them off doesn't work, they're definitely bonded on there somehow. This is what they look like:


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## orvi (Jan 9, 2022)

One thing that comes to my mind is strip the gold/silver using molten lead bath - or other suitable molten metal. Stainless steel isn´t particularly well soluble/wetted by the molten lead, and will float on top of the puddle. Use some flux/reducer to expose fresh surface of the lead, than pour the batch through some stainless steel mesh to fish out the remaining stainless pieces.
Of course, some gold will be lost in this process, some lead will stick or be entrapped in the stainless pieces etc. But vast majority will be leached.
Owltech in his videos used molten lead dip to strip gold plated transistors, and it worked quite quickly. Altough some gold was lost during the process due to adhering of lead to nickel casings of transistors. Stainless should be less painful in this wiew I think.
And of course, all epoxy/paint junk on them should be properly burned away, not overheating the individual pieces, as you can diffuse more gold inside the base metal.


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## nickvc (Jan 10, 2022)

As I advised the OP I would use HCl to dissolve the stainless it is easy to acquire , cheap and not overly dangerous to use , you will need to heat the acid so use decent glassware and stay upwind if you don’t have a hood , the gold pieces should eventually just drop off .
If you have a hood and access to nitric then use reverse AR which will dissolve the gold leaving the stainless intact.


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## NitrogenERbiumDYsprosium (Jan 10, 2022)

nickvc said:


> As I advised the OP I would use HCl to dissolve the stainless it is easy to acquire , cheap and not overly dangerous to use , you will need to heat the acid so use decent glassware and stay upwind if you don’t have a hood , the gold pieces should eventually just drop off .
> If you have a hood and access to nitric then use reverse AR which will dissolve the gold leaving the stainless intact.


Thank you, I have plenty of HCL and nitric as well. I didn't know the HCL could dissolve stainless that effectively. I think I'd probably use less going the nitric route, but I had found conflicting info on how it would affect the gold & stainless together (such as a risk of bonding more iron to the gold or the other way around) I have fans and gas masks, my hood is too big (a 6 foot kewaunee supreme) so I took it apart...I don't really know what to do with it tbh. I bought one of those fume care fingerprint development chambers for some re-engineering fun, so I can always just hang onto the charms for later. When I get it sorted out I'll post an update for sure, there are plenty of people with the same question and little good answering.


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## 4metals (Jan 10, 2022)

It was years ago when a similar thread came up and we discussed reverse AR. I remember discussing ir with Chris Owen (Goldsilverpro) as he was using it on aircraft engine parts which were stainless soldered with a eutectic gold nickel braze alloy. This was an example of material this process works on. I had a client who had a large lot of stainless steel jewelry (well over 1000 ounces) which had a small inlay of karat gold which was there specifically to set small diamonds in. Aqua regia would have been a disaster on this material. Reverse AR is the answer. 

There is a catch, the major ingredient is 70% Nitric Acid and about 3% of Hydrochloric Acid. The nitric passivates the stainless so it will not dissolve and the Hydrochloric Acid reacts with the nitric to dissolve the gold, leaving the stainless behind. But the high percentage of nitric needs to be neutralized before the gold can be dropped. This is where sulfamic acid can be your friend. 

If you search on reverse aqua regia you will find some useful discussions. As others pointed out, this is not a procedure for people new to refining.


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