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ThePierCer

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 10, 2007
Messages
78
Location
Johnston, RI
{me doing the happy dance}

I just did my first test batch using Steves Cell, and all I have to say is THANK YOU!!! The only thing I did different was I used Surgical SS Piercing forcepts for my Anode, and it seemed to work well.

I did about 3/4 of a pound of gold plated jewelry; watch bands, cufflinks, broches, ect and now have a big pile of completely stripped jewelry. And a solution of thick black gooo in my container. I'm hoping the "goo" is gold, i'll have top go back and read over the posts to make sure.

Has an yone else used the cell, and what kind of luck have you had so far?
 
I never used it but I'm sure it works. Yes, if you have black «goo» it's gold. Just filter it like Steve said.
Steve is doing pretty good tutorial right ? ;)
 
I have used a cell similar to Steve's and they do work. Just remember before you filter to dilute the mixture first then let it sit for 24 hrs. so all of the gold settles to the bottom.

Good luck

-Bill
 
thanks bill, i was kinda woundering how i was going to get it out. the mixture is so thick to begin with. Should i just add a few qts of water, let it sit and have everything seperate? That seems the most logical way.
 
I pour all of the cell's contents into a large pitcher and then I add some more water to the empty cell to rinse out any leftover gold. I dump that into the pitcher then I add about 2 cups of water to the pitcher. I let it settle for 24 hours, then I filter it using 3-4 coffee filters.

-Bill
 
Piercer,

The cell is not my own creation but the tutorials are.

Here's a note about any acid water mixtures, ALWAYS add the acid to the water not vice versa!

You shouldn't jump the gun and filter right away. There isn't as much gold as it looks like because it's all fluffy in the solution. I usually run the cell for 12-24 hours of operating time before filtering. It just saves acid this way. I'm preparing a filtering video tomorrow for the forum.

Here's a quick what to do:

Your pitcher will melt if you don't do this slowly. I recommend placing the pitcher in a large wash tub in case it melts!

Add 6 cups of water to a gallon pitcher.

skullnbones_smallrev.jpg
SLOWLY add 1/2 of the cell contents to the pitcher, THIS gets hot very quickly so take your time! Add 2 more cups of water to the pitcher to speed the cooling process.

Let the pitcher cool.

SLOWLY add the remaining liquid from the cell. Letting the pitcher cool periodically.

Rinse the cell into the pitcher with one cup of distilled water.

Rinse the cell into the pitcher with another cup of distilled water.
skullnbones_smallrev.jpg


Let the pitcher settle overnight.

Steve
 
i was planning on useing this acid until it was as saturated as i could get, then wash and filter. At least I know now what to do when it's time.
 
Why would you let it overnight ? If you vacuum filter it, you will get the powder without any leftover liquid. Thats great and could be fired.
 
Vaccuum filtration can speed the filtering, be sure the mix is cooled down before filtering. Wash with plenty of distilled when filtering. The filter should be clean and white where exposed not blue or green tinted.
 
Aqua Regia or Nitric Acid will turn blue when it dissolves copper. And green when there is many base metals...
 
Place the pitcher in a tub partly filled with cold water. The water will act as a heat sink and also dilute the acid if you do have an accident. Just a suggestion. SAFETY FIRST.

Gary
 
ThePierCer said:
those tutorials are awesome..... I've learned so much from him. He is definately and asset to this forum.

I'll definatelly second that! :D

Here's a question though (actually I have two questions).

1) What does it mean if the color is not green or blue, but rather very "grape koolaid" purple? (I must admit here that I jumped the gun and used tap water.. DOH! :shock: :shock: ) Definately will use distilled for the rest of the cell.

Here's what I did. I filled a Mason jar with tap water and rinsed them off in that (jewelery scrap, mostly bangle bracelets) before discarding the de-plated stuff to my "hold on to it just in case there's more to recover" pile. It was just a very quick solution to washing off the "suds" from the liquid lightning" (damn those buffers!) Just rinsing off the jewelery scrap I notied there was a good bit of precipitates in the jar, so I decided to filter that off and wound up with a very thick, black deposit left on the coffee filters. (I have distilled to use for when I clean out the cell, I just wasn't anticipating precips from rinsing it off).

and the number two question..

I was contemplating building a setup using a five gallon bucket, some pvc and a Brita water filter with a plastic drain/tap at the bottom of it. Has anyone tried using a water filter like that instead of coffee filters and a vaccumm? Any successes or issues? .. seems like a decent enough idea. If no one has tried it, I'll take a stab at it and if it works out I'll post schematics and share how I did it, provided it proves a succesful design.

Thanks,
Derek
 
I don't know about the brita filter idea but I too use liquid lightning and I get A LOT of black in my rinse too. I was amazed the first time I filtered it.

So ALWAYS filter your rinse water, especially if you use Liquid Lightning. (I know I pointed a lot people to Wal-Mart to buy it)
 
AuMINIMayem,

Is the purple color in the strong cell sulfuric or in the diluted sulfuric and rinses? I've seen the purple color in both but more often in the diluted sulfuric. Unless you have cobalt or manganese present, which I doubt, it is most likely colloidal gold. It takes only a minute quantity of gold to create this color. It may or may not settle. They have discovered colloidal gold solutions in Egyptian tombs that still haven't settled. Colloidal gold is made up of very small particles that are in between being a solid and being dissolved. You can sometimes make the colloid particles combine and settle by heating the diluted solution but, I don't think I would worry about it. There probably isn't enough there to even weigh. Sometimes, you can waste a lot of time, energy, and money getting that last tenth of a percent.


Steve,

Forgive me, but I can't chemically see the purpose of using distilled water in the dilution. In this, as in most cases, tap water would seem to perfectly suffice. I only use distilled water on one occasion: When I am dissolving silver in nitric acid. In this case, tap water, which contains chlorine precipitates out silver chloride. This creates a white cloud which make the reaction difficult to observe and also can cause losses of silver.

Did you have something else in mind that I haven't considered?
 
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