# Heeeeeeellllllp with melt



## golddigger2 (Oct 24, 2009)

Hi all
I am a newbe and am just trying my first melt with a mini furnace and gold refined with the ishor simplicity. I have seen the bad press here but didnt know that when i purchased the system. The metal seems to be thick and gluggy not runny like i have seen in the videos. the temperature is set to 1065 degrees celsius. I am pouring to a graphit 5 Oz mould any help would be appreciated.


P.s I cant access lazersteves website because i am using a mac. Any ideas?


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## Oz (Oct 24, 2009)

The first idea is that 1 post is enough within 1 hour, last I checked this was not a pay service here that you had a justifiable gripe if you did not receive an answer as quickly as you expected one.

As to the rest, how are you melting and why are you sure of the temperature? It would seem to me that if the gold is too viscous that perhaps your temperature readings are not correct.

Typically the proper flux is far more fluid than the metal.


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## golddigger2 (Oct 24, 2009)

Hi 
sorry about the duplicated posts not only am i brand new to this forum but i have never posted a message on any sites before and i thought the first one didn't go through. The pour went fine but now i have an even bigger problem. The melt was from the simplicity process i followed all the instructions and thought i was at the final hurdle but when i poured what i thought was gold as it cooled it turned black. At first i thought it was just a soot coating but i quickly realised what i had poured looked more like cast iron or carbon steel than gold. When i overturned the mould the ingot cracked and broke in half. It must be metal but is certainly not gold and it is very dissapointing when you see hundreds of dollars worth of jewelery scrap turned in to black carbon like rubbish. 

Any suggestions?


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## Palladium (Oct 24, 2009)

golddigger2 said:


> P.s I cant access lazersteves website because i am using a mac. Any ideas?



I think this will work. I think Steve is using Silverlight.

Microsoft Silverlight - 3.0.
This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:

Mac OS X 10.5 Intel 
Mac OS X 10.4 Intel 

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31433


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## Palladium (Oct 24, 2009)

Just don't throw anything away. Tell us what you started with and every step you did to reach this point. It's just a minor set back. Tell us a little about what you do.

Welcome to the forum. Start with the book in my sig line. 
:arrow: 1. Refining Precious Metal Wastes C[1].M Hoke http://tinyurl.com/mfnyhs


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## golddigger2 (Oct 24, 2009)

Thanks for all the replies guys

Ok Here goes

shore simplicity system. I added 6 cups of gc salt to the tank and 1 and 1/4 cups to the cell then i strung the gold jewelery scrap, rings, bracelets and chains on to silver wire. I placed the scrap in to the anode pouch connected the positive lead the scrap and the negative to the graphite rod in the tank. I turned on the rectifier and turned up the juice. 15 amps for 5 hours all metal disolved apart from fragments in the bottom of the anode pouch which was mostly copper. After 4-5 batches run exactly the same way I prepared to precipitate the gold. After removing the positive and negative leads from the system I removed the cell from the tank and poured the liquid into a visionware pot and heated it up as per the instructions. The liquid was fairly clear with a rusty green tinge. I had dissolved 15 ounces of metal in the system it worked out that I needed a full bag of odour free precipitant so i placed it in a clean 10 litre plastic bucket and added the boiling water metal mixture to it.
Once mixed I poured the mixture back into the visionware pot and almost imediately small brown particles began falling to the bottom. After allowing plenty of time for the particles to settle I tested for dissolved gold in the water. The precious metal detecting liquid turned black. but as i had used all my precipitant already I heated the mixture back up and let it settle again. Another test, another positive result. So more time to let it do its thing. I had to go away for a couple of days and when i came back I tested it again and finally got the result i was after. I carefully poured off the solution and filled back up with water and rinsed off the mud allowed it to settle again and repeated another 2-3 times. The final rinse was with deminerilised water. I tested the mud with aqua amonia and saw a change to blue and so rinsed again. I then heated the mud on the stove top to evaporate off the last of the water and placed it in the oven at about 150 degrees to dry out the mud for storage.

To begin the melt I purchased an electric mini furnace, I turned it on and ramped the temperature up to 1065 degrees. I filled the crucible up 1/3 from the bottom with the goldnadded about a teaspoon of borax and heated it. As the temperature came up, I added more gold. Once I had enough for my graphite Ingot mold, I let it sit for 45 minutes to make sure it was thoroughly heated. I then added another teaspoon and a half of borax to the crucible let it melt in and poured it in to the mold.

and now i find myself with ingots of carbon

So there you have it 

My first foray in to gold refining


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## qst42know (Oct 24, 2009)

I have no answer for you but a couple questions.

What type of jewelery did you run? Plated or genuine karat gold?

How did you determine the remains in the anode bag was copper?

Any photos?

Save everything solutions and solids till your gold is found.


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## golddigger2 (Oct 24, 2009)

it was mainly plated but there was some gold filled and carat gold. I didnt test the metal in the anode pouch but it looked like copper.
Unfortunately no photo's as i did the refining a couple of weeks ago. And only did the melt today.

I have contacted shore and will post any answers they supply


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## golddigger2 (Oct 25, 2009)

I contacted shor and they said that I wasnt getting the melt hot enough which is most likely true as I bought an electric mini furnace off the net and it only goes up to 1100 degrees c and I found out yesterday gold melts at 2050 degrees f which is 1121 degrees c. I assumed, wrongly of course that if the furnace title actually contained the words gold and silver melting furnace, that it might get hot enough to do what it claims.( expensive mistake) Any way I did the melt again and got exactly the same result. The stuff I poured doesn't even resemble metal shor said it is still gold dust which is coated in burnt and blackened borax which i added to the first melt. But it is black, crumbly and looks to me like carbon but it melted and poured like a metal. This time I am including some photos.

Any Ideas?

ThanksView attachment 2
View attachment 3


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## Harold_V (Oct 25, 2009)

golddigger2 said:


> I found out yesterday gold melts at 2050 degrees f which is 1121 degrees c.


Nope! Gold melts in the vicinity of 1950° F, not 2050°. 



> I assumed, wrongly of course that if the furnace title actually contained the words gold and silver melting furnace, that it might get hot enough to do what it claims


No, it's very capable of doing what it claims, it simply isn't a good tool to use for the purpose. GSP and I see eye to eye on these miserable furnaces-----they are not well suited to the purpose intended. Consider, also, that to the general public, melting gold and silver entails melting gold and silver alloys, each of which melt well below 1900° F. 



> ( expensive mistake)


Indeed! And for more than one reason. For starters, it's not a good idea to use flux in those crucibles. Melting pure gold can be easily accomplished without a furnace, using a melting dish that has been properly prepared, and a torch. Unless you melt large volumes, there's little reason to use a furnace _of any description_ (Steve's little brick furnace excepted). I can melt ten ounces of gold faster than you can get a furnace up to 1,000°. 



> Any Ideas?



Yep! Get a melting dish, and, lose the idea of pouring gold that has been fluxed to a graphite mold. In fact, I'd recommend you lose the idea of melting your refined gold with flux. If you prepare your melting dish properly, and your gold is refined properly, you can melt the gold perfectly well without any. That way you can pour ingots without the worry of flux entrapment, or the destruction of your graphite molds or crucibles. 

If you intend to pour ingots, get metallic molds. They are best made of ductile iron, but plain cast (gray) iron will serve well, too. Graphite molds are fine, but they degrade with time, due to combustion of the graphite. They are also destroyed by the introduction of flux. Iron molds are not. 

Harold


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## golddigger2 (Oct 25, 2009)

great info 

thanks again harold


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## Palladium (Oct 25, 2009)

Between me, you, and a fence post can i ask what you gave for the melter ?


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## golddigger2 (Oct 25, 2009)

It was $549.99 U.S! You know what they say about a fool and his money being quickly parted, it seems appropriate in this instance. Fortunately I am in the previlidged position to make more money. I know plenty of people out there at the moment are not so lucky


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## lazersteve (Oct 25, 2009)

Aside from your furnace issues, looking at the bar tells me temperature is not your only problem. 

The color appears to be completely devoid of gold. The ingot also appears to be very crystalline and brittle. These things lead me to believe you are not melting gold. The bar resembles slag more than metal.

Can you be more specific on how you arrived at this result. I'm interested in the starting weights of the items you processed and the resulting weight of the left overs and precipitates.

Steve


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## Anonymous (Oct 25, 2009)

I tend to agree that bar looks just like the slag from my torching down black sand with soda ash.

Jim


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 25, 2009)

golddigger2,

Definitely looks and acts like slag to me. Are there any small metal BBs on the bottom of the slag bar? Look carefully - sometimes they are hard to find. Grind it up and look for BBs. How much plated material did you start with, in grams? How much gold filled? How much karat gold? I would guess that you are looking for a very small amount of gold. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've never run the Shor unit (and probably never will) but, I have read the instructions. Although it's been quite awhile, I don't remember it being recommended for plated material. I could easily be wrong.

For small amounts of metal and a lot of slag, it helps to set the mold at an angle (say, 10 - 15 degrees), so that one corner is the lowest point. Pour the melt directly into that corner of the pre-heated, carboned mold. That way, the metal, if there is any, will tend to collect in that corner. It also would help to thin the slag, but I'm afraid to recommend using something like fluorspar, since it would most probably attack the crucible. Those carbon crucibles that come with Electromelt type furnaces are not durable at all.

Chris


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 25, 2009)

goldgigger2 said:


> *it was mainly plated* but there was some gold filled and carat gold. I didnt test the metal in the anode pouch but it looked like copper.



I just skimmed over the Simplicity instructions and, unless i was blind, I found nothing about running gold plated materials. All I saw was karat gold and gold from buffing dust. It sounds like the copper looking stuff in the anode bag was probably just that - copper - from the base metal of the plated stuff. It's my guess that running plated material was the main cause of your problems.

http://www.ishor.com/simplicityInstr.htm

Besides looking for the gold in the slag bar, I would suspect that some may be in the coppery material in the anode bag. I would try dissolving it without dissolving any gold that might be present. You can try using Steve's HCl/peroxide method or about 20% nitric acid, by volume, for this purpose. Before using either, make sure you know what you're doing and start experimenting with small amounts. There's tons of info on the forum for both processes. Check out lazersteve's videos on his website for the HCl/peroxide method. At the bottom of all his posts (see above, on this thread), there's a link for his website.


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## qst42know (Oct 25, 2009)

No offence but I read the instructions a little differently. From the Shor instructions base metals are attacked rapidly so your items are hung from silver wires. If your plated material disintegrated and lost contact with the wire that gold is in the bag. Karat gold items would have maintained contact and be dissolved normally. Your gold may be in both places.


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## goldsilverpro (Oct 25, 2009)

qst42know,

I think you're right about the mechanism of what happened in the anode bag. Makes sense to me.

BTW, I just figured out what qst42know means. I'm often very dense.

Chris


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## golddigger2 (Oct 26, 2009)

thanks everybody I have already watched steves video's on the acid perocide method. Would dissolving in AR work? or is it better just to stick with AP?


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## Palladium (Oct 26, 2009)

If he boiled all that slag in con sulfuric wouldn't it remove most of the borax ? Then clean it up with some hcl to remove the base metals and then use the acid Clorox process ?

Just guessing here. :?:


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## qst42know (Oct 26, 2009)

Unless you added a huge amount of borax, the melt may be mostly Shor gold dissolving salt and precipitant.

Is the slag soluble in boiling water?


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