Extracting gold from gold filled Jewelry

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Ian18206

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
18
Hello everyone I'm new to this forum,and so far it seems like a great environment. I just had a few questions to ask everyone. I started a batch of gold filled jewelry, which i have never done before. I read a lot about the process but couldn't get exact details on how to do it. So what i have done so far is to dilute it i was supposed to put it in a 1 to 1 solution of 70% nitric and distilled water. and the reaction hours later has completely stopped. the liquid has became blue in color and i see flakes of gold floating at the top. it didn't completely dissolve the gold filled jewelry because its still at the bottom of the jar. I was just wondering if i should gather the flakes and run them through aqua ragia, or if I'm supposed to filter the solution and keep the gold flakes and then run the remains at the bottom of the jar through ar. Or if i just completely did the wrong process for gold filled. Please help me out guys I've never done gold filled before and would locw to hear from you all.
Thanks
Ian
 
your reaction may have run out of nitric before it was completed.some gold filled jewelry will hold its shape even after the base metal has been dissolved depending on the type and wear. filter the solution you have now into a clean vessel to reclaim the silver and replace the solution with fresh acid and start the reaction again to be sure you have dissolved all the base metal.

it is a good idea to incinerate gold filled jewelry before you start the process to remove any organic material.

did you process any watch bands? if so,did you remove the stainless steel and springs?

after your sure the base metal is dissolved, then you can move on to AR. from the sound of it your doing pretty good so far.
 
Hi Ian!
I agree with Geo.

I hope you read all about how to handle safely the chemicals used for recovering & refining the PM's, especially nitric, since no "cartridge type" respirator will filter out nitric fumes, NONE!!! You must do the process under a fume hood or outside...

You also need to learn to calculate how much nitric is needed in order to complete the digestion of the base metals.

Did you apply heat to the solution? This will speed up the process & also get the most out of your nitric.

Take care & be safe!

Phil
 
Because of the potential filtering problems that accompany gold filled objects, there's a step that I never see discussed. The benefits outweigh any inconvenience, so I strongly suggest you pay attention.

Once all of the base metals have been dissolved, the remaining solids should be incinerated. They should then be given a wash in heated HCl. Rinse well, then dissolve the remains with the solvent of choice (I used aqua regia). The second incineration and HCl wash does wonders towards cleaning up troublesome traces, and ensures that the resulting solution will filter without issue. The gold that results form the added treatment tends to be of excellent quality.

Harold
 
Thank you everyone!! I appreciate you guys supporting me with more knowledge! Everytime i ask locals that do gold processing they won't help me at all! So i need to filter the solution? And the the gold flakes on top floating, is that gold or just base metal as well. If its gold, do i filter that out and just melt it? and i understand you said to run it through nitric again, by doing so is the gold supposed to float the top again? because from what i understand gold will not dissolve unless its mixed with nitric and hcl. But anyhow sorry for all the questions and thanks for the feedback!
Ian
 
when you filter your solution, add what is in the filter back to finish the reaction (any gold flakes or solids). just rinse the filter back into your reaction vessel. after the reaction is complete, there shouldnt be much of anything but gold left. follow the directions of all the other post on this topic. dont forget to incinerate and wash with hot hcl.
 
Thank you geo! i just filtered the solution and there a bunch of flakes and what appears to be metals that are stripped at the bottom of the solution. I'm gonna run it all through nitric and water one more time, filter it and melt the gold. thanks for all the help!
 
Ian18206 said:
Thank you geo! i just filtered the solution and there a bunch of flakes and what appears to be metals that are stripped at the bottom of the solution. I'm gonna run it all through nitric and water one more time, filter it and melt the gold. thanks for all the help!

That is not what the instructions were. If you skip steps your final product will suffer.
 
Ian18206 said:
Ok so i need to wash with hcl before i melt it?

Well, after the HCL wash you neen to disslove your gold into a solution of HCL/clorox or HCL/nitric and then drop your gold out of solution with SMB( sodium metabisulphite) or copperas. Siphon off your solution and then wash your gold powder in alternate water and HCL washes 2 cycles of 3 times each. Then redissolve your gold into solution again and drop it out of solution again. Wash your powder in waster 3-4 times then slowly dry your powder, then you are ready to melt it.

You should find a link to Hokes book found in many of the members sig lines and download it and start reading.

Good luck. 8)
 
alright that sounds great! I really appreciate all of your help! Ive never processed gold filled and I'm hoping i can get it done successfully! I have about ten pounds of ceramic cpu s I'm gonna be working on tomorrow and I'm pretty sure I've got it down. All i do is break them all, then put them in aqua ragia. then filter a few times then use sm to make a muddy gold appearance. filter and melt. Its just i can't ever get it 999 its always 94-96% pure. but thank you so much for the info!
 
All the advise you have been given is spot on as always but to I will try to explain why you don't melt the GF after the nitric or hydrochloric. The left over material will have been leached of base metals and silver fairly well after the nitric if done properly and the incineration, not melting, of the powders and solids will help form oxides which the hydrochloric can again leach but you won't remove all the base metals,so if you melt you won't get fine gold and bars are much more difficult to dissolve than powders hence the advice to redissolve the powders. Don't forget to use your stannous on any solutions you create, regular testing should be done, especially when your new to refining, even if you suspect no values have been dissolved rather than assuming there are no values present.
 
Ian18206 said:
alright that sounds great! I really appreciate all of your help! Ive never processed gold filled and I'm hoping i can get it done successfully! I have about ten pounds of ceramic cpu s I'm gonna be working on tomorrow and I'm pretty sure I've got it down. All i do is break them all, then put them in aqua ragia. then filter a few times then use sm to make a muddy gold appearance. filter and melt. Its just i can't ever get it 999 its always 94-96% pure.
Small wonder! You keep leaving out a proper wash procedure and a re-dissolution and you'll continue with the 94-96% results. Please pay attention to EVERYTHING you are told, not just the part you want to acknowledge.

Harold
 
nickvc said:
All the advise you have been given is spot on as always but to I will try to explain why you don't melt the GF after the nitric or hydrochloric. The left over material will have been leached of base metals and silver fairly well after the nitric if done properly and the incineration, not melting, of the powders and solids will help form oxides which the hydrochloric can again leach but you won't remove all the base metals,so if you melt you won't get fine gold and bars are much more difficult to dissolve than powders hence the advice to redissolve the powders. Don't forget to use your stannous on any solutions you create, regular testing should be done, especially when your new to refining, even if you suspect no values have been dissolved rather than assuming there are no values present.

This is good advice.

And don't forget Harold's advice re incineration before the HCl wash. This is an important step.

If you don't, the traces of nitric that will inevitably be present will make AR when you add the HCl, dissolving (and losing) your precious gold.
 
Harold:
could you clarify ?
after the initial treatment to dissolve the bulk of the gold from the jewelry , you take the solids left in the bottom, and incenerate that ?
then once more treat the incnerated, washed solids with the nitric solution again ? is this to remove the last traces of gold ?
 
promogoons said:
Harold:
could you clarify ?
after the initial treatment to dissolve the bulk of the gold from the jewelry , you take the solids left in the bottom, and incenerate that ?
then once more treat the incnerated, washed solids with the nitric solution again ? is this to remove the last traces of gold ?
Please read what I said again, and try to forget what you posted here. If you don't, you're going to repeat the mistake you made time and again. However, for clarity, I'll detail what you're doing wrong (at least mentally).

Once all of the base metals have been dissolved, you're left with solids of many descriptions. These solids are gathered (either by filtration, or by settling), then incinerated. The filter itself should be included in the incineration, assuming you've used one.

After incineration, the solids are given a wash with HCl (not nitric), and then rinsed until the rinse water is clear of color. This operation eliminates substances that complicate filtration of the values, once dissolved. If you wash with nitric, as you suggested, you'll simply re-create the same problems you're trying to eliminate.

When the final rinse has been completed, you simply dissolve the solids with the solvent of your choosing (mine was AR). There is no reason to filter the material again until you are ready to precipitate.

Harold
 
Ok , now I understand. Thanks.
BTW , I havent even begun collecting the gear to do this yet , just studying atm.
 
Can this be done to achieve the same result?

1. Take 100 grams of 14k gold jewelry
2. Alloy this 100 grams with 500 grams of copper to get just less than 20% pure gold (1/5 is 20% but you have to account for 14k content, which is about 58% gold)
3. SMELT the 14k jewelry with the 500 grams of copper and then drip pour slowly into water to get cornflake type of material
4. Take the cornflake alloy and soak in nitric.
5. Rinse and repeat until all alloied metal is liquidified...
6. Pour off the liquid base metal and then separate the black gold mud into a separate glass jar
7. Rinse the black mud with ammonia several times until the pour off is no longer colored and is all clear.
8. INCENERATE (slowly heat up to burn off any chemicals) until black mud is coco brown color
9. Take the coco powder and then smelt into gold bar.

This process would allow you to precipitate your silver out of the poured off solution from the spent nitric by dropping copper into the solution. This process would also ensure no gold is lost if you keep all your liquid in a big bucket. If you really wanted to you could precipitate your copper from the solution by placing zinc into the bucket. (Make sure to do the math so you don't put too much metal into the solutions causing a result that is less than perfect)

Why does everyone insist on using Aqua Regia to refine their gold? I was taught by Gldman from eBay. This guy is brilliant and all my gold is ALWAYS 99.99% on my XRF.
 
Back
Top