# Pin Harvesting And The Humble Wood Chisel



## lycidas (Oct 25, 2010)

My opportunity to give back it seems after lurking for a few weeks.

I just discovered something interesting today while harvesting from a old motherboard. Sorry no pic's, I'm exhausted, I'm also riddled with ADD and may just forget. Thankfully the process is simple and will be easily repeatable by anyone with a scrap motherboard/mainboard, a wood chisel or better yet an assortment of them, and a stone to keep them sharp.

While removing chips from the board using lazersteve's method of a sharp chisel (I used a wood chisel since i couldn't find my cold chisel like the one Steve used) I started poking around the ram, pci, and processor slots of the motherboard.

I found you can easily "slide" the plastic bases off the pins by wedging the chisel under the plastic and twisting. Working up and down the slot the plastic comes off leaving the pins attached to the motherboard.

In no time flat I was staring at a forest of pins sticking up from the board. I was really surprised by how many there were now, and the process produced almost no dust. I had earlier removed the cable pins with a cut-off disk which didn't work well. Having no "air chisel" the original idea looked really daunting, and my pin stash was meager.

I then tried to snip the pins off the board using fine wire cutters I use in my electronic projects. This didn't work well either since they liked to shoot allover the place. So I picked back up the wood chisel, re-sharpened it, and gave that tool a go. WoW!

By placing the bevel down, I was able to work the honed edge back and forth down the line of pins which cut them off at the base very rapidly. These pins are smaller in diameter than the cable pins so they came off nicely, again producing very little dust.

In my glee discovering this I didn't keep my chisel as sharp as I should so a few escaped, but they didn't shoot around like with the side cutters. I quickly worked my way over the board, mowing down that gold pin forest. This produced slightly more dust but again almost nothing; however I did get more of those darn surface mounted components. I considered this a small price to pay.

I'm up later than I should exhausted after a hard weekend of work. My living-rooms hardwood floor twinkles golden in the soft light by scattered bits of gold pins. I'm not eager to pick them up like before, I'm enjoying the view. I'm sure that will change once I step on one, but again small price to pay.

My meager pile of pins has grown large in only a couple hours of play, and is noticeably heavy now. Pins run and hide, I'm on my way with a mad glint in my eye.

I'm eager to hear about someone else's results using a wood chisel which will confirm it's as easy as I found it to be. Enjoy!
:mrgreen:


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## silversaddle1 (Oct 25, 2010)

You will find that a wood chisel has many uses in this line of work.


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## glorycloud (Oct 25, 2010)

The best use of your wood chisel could very well be on wood.

After playing the game of extracting the visible gold from escap,
I have found that my time and effort is better spent in procuring
volumes of boards and selling them at $2.80+ per pound after
I remove the easy stuff like memory, the cpu and any gold fingers.

Maybe I just value my time or maybe I have done the math for
myself as to what I receive in gold / cash versus the time and 
effort involved in not only scratching away at gold pins from boards
but all the time, effort and chemicals involved in processing and 
refining the gold from them.

Everyone has to figure that out for themselves of course. 8)


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## Chumbawamba (Oct 25, 2010)

Any kind of large scale processing of PCBs has to be done by first roasting the batch to make it friable and then pulverizing in some sort of mill. I won't begrudged someone manually recovering pins for small scale operations, but anything more than a few motherboards laying around is just too time consuming IMO to be useful.


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## lycidas (Oct 25, 2010)

This is just a hobby of mine. After retiring from the Army Infantry I have been building things, generally computer related. I made friends with the local city recycling guy after building them a couple of comps for their shop. I can now go there and grab whatever I want, so my unused computer parts was growing high. Time is not an issue for me.

However.

Reading the forum I saw that some process the pins still stuck in the plastic. The one's that arn't are manually pulling them out. This way I discovered takes practally no time after you practice a little bit. Each time I did it I got faster. I just stripped two entire motherboards, the old type with 6 pci slots, agp, processor, and 4 ram slots. Time on target was less than one hour per board on average, and I was still getting faster. Plus I recovered EVERY pin on those motherboards down to front panel connectors.

And not one of them is still stuck in plastic, they are ready to be processed once I finish my cell. I can't afford one of those fancy scales yet so I don't know the weight, but my bag of pins now dwarfs the one that lazersteve used in his copper wire mesh cell video.

And I have many more motherboards that can sate my desire to break stuff for fun and profit. Infantry, remember? lol :lol:

Edit:
BTW I do use my wood chisels on wood, it's the reason I bought them last year. I used them to build a long and strong backyard gate large enough to fit my large lawn tractor through. After reading for days about how difficult long wood gates are to support without sagging, and all the additional anchor material you needed for the main post.
I went medieval on its butt. I built my gate out of treated pine using mortise\ tenon connections, and lap joints; wedging the tenon's securely with oak wedges and lap joints secured with oak pins. The only modern fasteners used in that entire project was the hinges, and the gate latch.
My neighbors still come over to ride the gate open and closed, not believing how strong it is, while using very little materials. Been a year now, and the thing has not sagged a mm.
I'm about to start on my storage shed which will be built in the same mannor. Wood framing RULES! :mrgreen:


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## glorycloud (Oct 26, 2010)

"Time on target was less than one hour per board on average, and I was still getting faster. Plus I recovered EVERY pin on those motherboards down to front panel connectors."

Um, a motherboard weighs about one pound. If you can sell that motherboard
w/o the cpu and memory for $2.75, why would you spend an hour scratching
at the same board? That equates to well less than $3.00 per hour for your time and effort. 
If you had ten motherboards, you would get $27.50 and
have zero additional effort and time to earn that amount vs. all the time effort and chemicals to MAYBE get $27.00 worth of gold.

Do your thing amigo but I have done what you are doing and my humble
opinion is that you can do much better for yourself by focusing on getting
more escrap to recycle than to chase after pennies in gold when dollars
can be made. 8)


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## rusty (Oct 26, 2010)

glorycloud said:


> "Time on target was less than one hour per board on average, and I was still getting faster. Plus I recovered EVERY pin on those motherboards down to front panel connectors."
> 
> Do your thing amigo )



glorycloud not everyone here on GRF is in this for the money, refining precious metals is a very unique hobby and learning experience for most of us. Harvesting pins and fingers is a good source of refining material with out the cost outlay. For most of us e-scrap comes at no cost but our labor a labor of love.

I don't understand why you are trying to discourage our new member with only 3 posts to his credit, he shows a willingness to share.

Welcome to the forum lycidas as time goes on you will get better and faster at harvesting. I myself have handicaps that only allow me a couple of hours a day on my feet.

Best Regards
Rusty


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## silversaddle1 (Oct 26, 2010)

Every journey starts with the first step. What a man cares to do in his spare time is his choice alone.

Keep going, someday you will have a pile like this.

160 pounds and still going.


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## bigjohn (Oct 26, 2010)

Looks like it's time to order that 55 gallon drum of hcl


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## lycidas (Oct 26, 2010)

No worries about discouragement. It does sadden me that it is done so often though.

Whats really ironic is their logic on (Time vs. Cost vs. Profit) is completely wrong.

They are confusing Value with Revenue.

Sure it may "cost" time but, It's my time and I can do with it as I please.
Sure it may "cost" money in supplies, but if your creative and resourceful that cost is minimal. 
Sure I'm actually "loosing" money in the process, but I'm having fun.

What is money anyway? Paper backed by gold. Take a look around, do research, pull out that dollar and really see how much it is worth. Will it be here forever? Absolutely not. I have a bag of money from allover the globe that is completely worthless.

If I had converted that money to even the smallest grain of gold, at enormous loss. In the end I would still have something of....

Value. Instead I have a worthless bag of paper.

Better look at the economy you live in and not just profit. I don't believe the Dollar will be here in its current form much longer. Gold however, is forever.

Your final refining process is to convert that value into revenue. Paper revenue.

I will keep mine as-is, the ultimate emergency fund scrounged from my local surroundings. If the fire hits and the paper burns, wheres your gold? I know where mine is.

Edit: Holy FraK that's a big assed pile of pins. It's on now bud! I can't let you throw down the gauntlet like that without picking it up. Time to sharpen up the chisels and charge the digital cameras. In a year or two, your done bud. Done! lol


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## SentMe (Oct 26, 2010)

lycidas said:


> This is just a hobby of mine. After retiring from the Army Infantry I have been building things, generally computer related.



Two scoops of Hooah :mrgreen:


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## butcher (Oct 27, 2010)

I can spend hours in my backyard lab, or reading about gold and metals, panning in the river, or busting rock out of abandoned gold mines, cannot say I will get rich, but I am happy, for me it is not about money, Heck I blow that too easily, for me gold refining would be boring if I looked at it like work, (although I am a workaholic and love that too), I work to make money, I refine gold for the love of it. what fun is it to sell circuit boards? how much fun did lycidas have with a wood chisel, how much fun will he have melting that gold?
how much will he learn and be inspired to learn from his hard work having fun at the same time? keep up the waisting of your time the gold will accumulate, and enjoying what you do and learning will make you live longer giving you more time to enjoy doing what you like to do wasting your time.
Glorycloud if selling your boards makes you happy, good, and thank you for keeping us informed of that option and the prices you get for them, this information is helpful if we decide to go that way.


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## silversaddle1 (Oct 27, 2010)

_"Edit: Holy FraK that's a big assed pile of pins. It's on now bud! I can't let you throw down the gauntlet like that without picking it up. Time to sharpen up the chisels and charge the digital cameras. In a year or two, your done bud. Done! lol"_

Keep in mind that is only one tub of pins, I have more! :lol: :lol:


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## hemicuda (Oct 27, 2010)

I too have used the Humble wood chisel as well with excellent results on large back plane boards covered in pins,( albeit they were mostly wired wrapped,which was great cause they stayed in place better,I also had covered the boards with a sheet to keep the odd pin or 2 from flying away!!!).

I do agree that keeping whatever you can is very beneficial when it comes to Gold and related PM's,as we all have heard through this great forum that paper currency is facing a doomed fate.

It is one of the greatest feelings after all is said and done that you hold in your hand a shining button of Gold or whatever it be that makes you happy!

To a certain extent I do agree with Glorycloud about selling his boards for whatever his buyer will pay, but if it was me I would sell low to mid grade scrap for sure then I would turn around and recycle my cash back into good old reliable GOLD!!!!!! 

Just my 2 cents worth!

Regards,Keith.


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## lycidas (Oct 29, 2010)

Glorycloud sells boards as a hobby? Dude, you need to get the blood flowing. Rapelling, Skydiving, etc... I did those as a career so this Chemistry stuff works for me now. Even sportin my first wittle acid burn cause I was lazy. (wont happen again lol)

If your ever in the Savannah area look me up. Well go destroy something. That always works when nothing else will. lol


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## rusty (Oct 29, 2010)

lycidas said:


> Glorycloud sells boards as a hobby? Dude, you need to get the blood flowing. Rapelling, Skydiving, etc... I did those as a career so this Chemistry stuff works for me now. Even sportin my first wittle acid burn cause I was lazy. (wont happen again lol)
> 
> If your ever in the Savannah area look me up. Well go destroy something. That always works when nothing else will. lol



Savannah, hey dude you missed your calling but it's not to late. Make a trip over to that place that sells mining equipment they'll have the proper balls used for a ball mill. Everyone here on the forum is having trouble finding them.

I'll bet they have a pile of used half worn balls laying in the yard somewhere.

I could use another dozen myself nothing larger than 3/5 inches in diameter for me smaller is alright and I bet you could make more sales from GRF members.


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## lycidas (Oct 30, 2010)

I'll look into it. I didn't realize there was a used mining equipment place here. I thought they would all be up in Northern GA where the old gold rush was. I don't know much about ball mills or what you guys are looking for. I never considered it since we sit mostly on sand and muck here.


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## rusty (Oct 30, 2010)

lycidas said:


> I'll look into it. I didn't realize there was a used mining equipment place here. I thought they would all be up in Northern GA where the old gold rush was. I don't know much about ball mills or what you guys are looking for. I never considered it since we sit mostly on sand and muck here.



My mistake I thought you were near Kamloops B.C. near this Company who sell used mining equipment
http://www.savonaequip.com/


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## lycidas (Oct 30, 2010)

Whats the name of the company? Found D Kaufman, but when I ran it's address the site doesn't look like a equipment place in aerial view.


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## wrecker45 (Nov 4, 2010)

just a thought guys i sell my mother boards and use the money to buy gold jewlery


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