First attempt at incinerating filters not a stunning success

Hello all,
Well, I attempted to incinerate a bunch of filters and some paper towels I used to soak up an AP spill and I don't think it went so well. I used a stainless steel saucepan and heated the bottom red hot with my oxyacetylene torch and put it over a propane burner to keep it hot. I slowly added the filters and let them burn then added flame (neutral to slightly oxidizing) gently to reduce the black ash to white. When most of the black was gone I turned off the gas and blew straight oxygen over the embers until they quit glowing orange.(and other pretty colors) The bottom of the pan was still barely red so I tried reheating it. I ended up with very little white ash left but there is a bunch of what looks like dark slag and molten beads of (copper?) stuck to the bottom of the pan. Most of it scrapes off with a little effort. I lost very little ash while I was heating it but this is not what I was expecting to see. Also, the inside of my pan now has what looks a thick coating of red rust on it. This is a lot more material than I thought I would get from 30 or so coffee filters and a bunch of paper towels. Any suggestions as to what I did wrong or what to do next? I am thinking I may need to incinerate this again.
Thanks

Well the mistake with the incineration was using too much heat that you melted some if not all of the metals.
You can now put what you have recovered in nitric acid hitch should remove most of the base metals and any silver, test the solution when finished if you suspect any PGMs.
Once you have eliminated the base metals dissolve what's left using whichever solvent you prefer.

Kind of what I thought too. but why is it so dark, all the pictures I've seen of finished incineration are very light grey-white with a little black. If this was from my garden I'd say it looks like great dirt!

If you want my guess you have oxidised most of the base metals, this isn't necessarily bad news...try putting a sample of what you have into HCl if tin is present and hasn't melted into those beads you may be able to remove it. If you get no reaction to the HCl then it's time to try nitric, if the tin is still in the alloy whatever you recover may need to go back for incineration to oxidise the tin as it will hold some of your gold, if this process is needed then go from incineration to HCl to remove the tin, rinse well after all reaction has stopped and dissolve what is left.