# I Actually Did It! - My First Gold Button



## Anonymous (Feb 13, 2013)

Hello members,

I actually did my first button :lol: WOW, this is amazing! I actually did it.

I want to thank everyone for all of their precious time in helping me out. I also want to thank *Noxx* for starting this forum in the first place. 

This wasn't as hard as I thought. It just took patience and lots of studying, and plenty of notes and understanding. Man, this feels great. I'm still gazing at this right now. 

I had promised my wife before I started using the acids and such, that my first refining and melts will go to her. I did some silver. I gave it to her. Last night I melted some gold powder and made a button, now I'm giving her that too.

Here are a few pictures of the gold.
















The batch of solution I've been working with still shows positive for gold. I'll work on that later, but I now have a better understanding of this process and I am confident I can do my next batch in less time, with less mistakes too.

Thank You All For All Your Help! :lol: I believe I'm hooked!

Kevin


----------



## jmdlcar (Feb 13, 2013)

Kevin,

That real nice button. I hope when I do my first button looks that great. Up to now I had someone else do mine.

Jack


----------



## Auful (Feb 13, 2013)

Kevin,

Congrats! It looks great! I bet that is a wonderful feeling! I am still studying and trying to acquire scrap to refine so that someday I will be posting my first button. The gold in my avatar is only melted gold flakes I panned/sluiced in S. Oregon. 

Matt


----------



## jeneje (Feb 13, 2013)

The first born is always special, i still have mine. Great job :mrgreen: keep learning and making babies :lol: .
Ken


----------



## Barren Realms 007 (Feb 13, 2013)

Good job. Now go shoot mama bear and papa bear and you will have a family. 8)


----------



## Anonymous (Feb 13, 2013)

I just now used my stone and acid test kit with the 22K acid, and it comes back at least 22K. Once I made my streak on the stone, I placed the 22K acid on it and the streak I made never disappeared.

Right now, I have no other way to know the exact purity of it, but since it tests positive for 22K, I'm happy with that. I'll get me other tools/equipment later on once I can afford them to test the purity better.

Also, once it gets nice and sunny again here, I'll take another picture of the button outside. This button is so shiny, I can actually see my own reflection on it. As it started to cool from the melting dish, I took it out with my tweezers and dropped it in a loaf pan full of cold water and a few ice cubes. My wife told me that she heard it when it dropped to the bottom of the pan. :lol: 

Kevin


----------



## denim (Feb 13, 2013)

Awesome job! I love the great separation of all the different types of pins etc you have. It's easy to see you are a 'details oriented' kind a guy. Keep up the good work and you'll be swimming in buttons soon.


----------



## jmdlcar (Feb 13, 2013)

Hi testerman,

Was it pins and if so was it a pound and half pins?

Did you take a picture of your Silver button and how big was it?
Jack


----------



## Anonymous (Feb 13, 2013)

jmdlcar said:


> Hi testerman,
> 
> Was it pins and if so was it a pound and half pins?
> 
> ...


All of those were connector pins that came from many different connectors. I have the photos of all of them and I am going to do a thread to illustrate for example, a pound of connectors, and what you'll have AFTER you strip them from the plastic or metal. None of the pins I processed came from hard drives. I still have close to 30 lbs of connectors to process. It should be around 15 lb +/- once they're all stripped.

Also, all the pins I have processed so far, they are completely gold plated. None of them had any solder or partially plated, and I still have lbs worth of them to do.

What I processed so far was 2 lbs of pins, but the problem came when I spilled some of my solution, and I still have pins that haven't been completely stripped or stripped at all, along with a bunch of black residue in my rinse pail. I'm going to process that later too, along with going through the batch and redoing all the still gold plated pins. 

I did take pictures of my silver, but it wasn't a button. I poured it in one of my conical molds. Kinda looks like a Hershey's Kisses with the foil still on them. As a matter of fact, it's here in the Gallery. I still have over 50 pounds of mylars to do, which should yield me around 25+ ozt of silver. That is yet to been factual or not. Look for my thread on the mylars.

I also have around a lb or so of Ceramic Monolithic Capacitors I've been saving. Palladium is up over $100 since I started doing any of this. It was around $650 per oz, now it's $768 (at this moment) per oz.

Once I make the time, I'll do a gallery of the work I've been doing, along with the yields and how I've done them. I take plenty of photos and I keep detailed notes.

Thanks again for all the congrats and inspiration you all have given to me.

Kevin


----------



## Pantherlikher (Feb 13, 2013)

You da man test...
Kepp those acurate notes so that someday, you can write your own book for the world. I'm far from detail oriented but "clinical test notes" make it very easy to duplicate.

BS.
Still waitin for the snow to be gone to find my shiny thingy...


----------



## jonn (Feb 14, 2013)

Great job testerman, thats a real beauty, nice color and good looking powder. Congrats. :lol:


----------



## tek4g63 (Feb 14, 2013)

Congratulations! Its a good feeling seeing that first button form, isn't it.

With that many pins it won't take you long to have a pile of buttons, or a jar of corn flakes. :mrgreen:


----------



## Geo (Feb 14, 2013)

good work Kevin. the purity can be seen in the shine and luster. whether or not you reclaimed all the gold you had in solution does not detract from the quality of what you did recover.you did a good job washing and rinsing and it shows.its obvious that you took the advise given to heart. the process only gets easier and faster the more you learn. next time you will get 100% reclamation and it will still be that quality.


----------



## Palladium (Feb 14, 2013)

If you will drop that button in some 50/50 nitric and boil it for a few minutes that flux will come off.


----------



## Anonymous (Feb 14, 2013)

Palladium said:


> If you will drop that button in some 50/50 nitric and boil it for a few minutes that flux will come off.


Are you talking about the borax used to season the melting dish? I seasoned the dish with borax, placed the powder in, then melted it, then dropped it in cold water. Now, I do have some flux, but I never used it as of yet.

*Question:* Is borax considered flux?

Kevin


----------



## Palladium (Feb 14, 2013)

Yep!


----------



## Anonymous (Feb 14, 2013)

Palladium said:


> Yep!


Ok. Now I know. I'll do it as soon as I can pry it from my wife's hand :mrgreen: 
So, once I add some Nitric to some water (should I used distilled) in the beaker, just let it boil for about 3 minutes? I'll do that just to see the difference in appearance it'll make.

This is all making more sense to me to as I've done my first refine, made some mistakes, corrected them and still recovered my gold. Thank goodness I have plenty of material to work with to refine.

I also forgot about all the gold foils I have from about 30 lbs or so of memory sticks I did with etching solution back in September 2012. I will keep saving them until I strip more cards down, but I already have enough ready to process.

Kevin


----------



## tek4g63 (Feb 15, 2013)

I don't believe that you have to use distilled water in this case.

I have personally, in the past when I used too much borax, put the button in some warm sulfuric acid. It removes the borax very well and, just as nitric, will not harm the gold.


----------

