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KHPH

Member
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
7
A very humble hello to the entire Gold Refining Community,

My name is Trevor and I am a relatively new resident to the state of Florida, originally from Tennessee. I have been a hobbyist in basic scrap metal salvage, recycling, and supplemental income for 4 to 5 years now off and on. It's always been enjoyable and an afterthought, however some late night ideas and curiosity has led me to the world of precious metal recovery via the crumb trails of YouTube and various, intensive web searches to discover new methods of getting the most out of my materials. Man, did I strike gold in discovering this amazing community.

I am an Audio Engineer by trade, and am currently serving as a recording tech intern by choice stepping down from paid work. (Unpaid) I took every bit of financial resources I had to leave Tennessee and come down here to study with a specific engineer. It's been tough to find sustainable work so I began collecting and organizing scrap materials as I have done in the past to help bring in some extra funds. Venturing into the world of e scrap, precious metal recovery, and refinement processes couldn't come at a better time. Being an engineer, one of my few confident qualities is the ability to learn fast and patiently apply collective knowledge in order to achieve the most efficient, effective results.

This community, which I only discovered earlier today, is something of a world wonder. The way in which all of your senior membership guides and nurtures rookie refiners without condescending attitudes or superiority complexes is absolutely astounding by comparison to other specialized skill forums scattered all over the internet. There are folks here that are actively working their butts off on a daily basis to compile, organize and translate the finer details regarding recovery, refinement and profit with little or no garaunteed return for their efforrs.

You guys rock and this place is a blessing.

Without taking a turn for personal biography and elaboration on my situation, I will only say this. I intend to use a relatively substantial amount of resources to invest in the ability to create at least somewhat sustainable income through PM recovery and refinement for a period of time. I'm not a chemist or an expert in the field of precious metals. However, I am an engineer. And engineers, like many of you here, understand that knowledge, safety, proper procedure and a dash of improvisation all come together to get positive results. I have already begun to download and read all of the recommended literature, ordered basic necessities for the most common extraction methods, and my first AP test batch is hard at work as I write this, small indeed however it's meant to be a proof of concept to me. I have some prior knowledge on these subjects, enough to provide a foundation of comprehension regarding the forces at work during these chemical procedures.

My ultimate goal is to build a part/full time weekly schedule of collection and processing here at home that will, at its peak,, produce pure precious metal yields in a quantity and quality necessary to turn a weekly profit. Granted, I've read enough so far to understand that this is no simple task and requires a great deal of study and trial and error, not to mention the steady acquisition of supplies, equipment and product. There are no garunetees and no promises of consistently making money. I am willing to commit to building this from the ground up quickly and efficiently and giving myself the best odds possible to provide for myself in such a fun and intriguing way.

I'm not here to simply soak up all of the open source information and be on my way with a system built on everyone else's shoulders. I want to contribute. I want to know HOW I can contribute. I applied some resources to lazersteves gold refinement store today which is a fountainhead for beginners like myself, and I would like to discover the best path in which to share my own personal experiences to help others have references. I'm a wild note-taker and I would be happy to publish the details regarding my own success and failure from today until I'm sleeping of a gold nugget mattress. (Yup, 24k gold is malleable and therefore must be comfortable. Right?) I also keep and seperate components I harvest from EVERYTHING and would love to add to any archives or collections of descriptive component lists.

Here is the bottom line regarding my membership on this thriving community. I'm going to invest the time, effort and resources necessary to accomplish a quality end result that creates income. In doing this I want to give back to everyone providing the lessons learned and successful methods I experiment with. When I woke up today I was completely convinced that a refinement community such as Gold Refining Forum didn't exist and going about extracting PMs was the wild west of scrapping. I couldn't have been more wrong, and I'm extremely glad I was.

A lot of rambling and unnecessary details, but the bottom line is I'm thrilled to be here and I want to help and contribute in addition to applying the resources available through this place to build a sustainable system. Thanks to everyone and this week I'm getting to work!
 
Greetings, Trevor and welcome to the "sandbox".

Excellent first post and plan. There are only two suggestions I have at this time:

1.) Safety, safety, and more safety.

2.) I have found that I get more "bang for my buck" by focusing on the higher end, non-consumer, electronics. As far as PMs are concerned, the "golden days" (pun intended) of consumer electronics has long past. Unless I am dealing with older consumer electronics, newer consumer ewaste doesn't have the PM values I want. I now focus on medical, telecom, aerospace, etc.

I would much rather tear apart a portable ultrasound machine than a laptop any day!

Peace and best wishes in your endeavors,

James :D
 
Thanks to both of you, and I appreciate the advice. I do want to focus my efforts on the methods, material and starting products that will result in the most profit at the lowest expense. I'm not trying to get rich, but I'm also not trying to sink a ton of money to the bottom of the ocean in order to become profitable years down the line, I'm trying to make a buck relatively soon. Also understand that small to mid scale operations can only accomplish so much. I will always be looking for the best unprocessed material containing the highest level of PM so your advice will always be welcomed and appreciated.
 
KHPH said:
I'm also not trying to sink a ton of money to the bottom of the ocean in order to become profitable years down the line, I'm trying to make a buck relatively soon.

It's not necessarily a ton of money as much as it's a ton of your life and TIME!
If your looking for profit anytime soon then the "phrase sooner or later might be the best term to use."

You seem intelligent and eager to learn, but is your motivation profit or education driven at this point?
I'm not trying to discourage you, but people who start out with a lot of enthusiasm in the beginning get disappointed a lot of times and flame out before they can break the sound barrier! This can be a long and sometimes frustrating journey before you can reap any of the benefits.

With that said...... Dude that was one hell of an introduction and one of the best i have seen here on the forum!
 
Good luck! It's not easy.

Profit it easy if you don't pay yourself. Profit is really difficult once you start paying an engineers salary. You have to be able to source enough material at a high enough margin that it's worthwhile to process. Then you have to do it in an environmentally responsible as well as legal manor.

Plus there's the issue of cash flow.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
All I can comment on is if you can find a decent continuous source of materials it’s possible to make money, but that’s the rub, there’s plenty of low grade around but a small amount of good materials which is normally well pursued by anyone in the know, the trick is to find a reliable regular source of materials which is no easy trick.
 
nickvc said:
All I can comment on is if you can find a decent continuous source of materials it’s possible to make money, but that’s the rub, there’s plenty of low grade around but a small amount of good materials which is normally well pursued by anyone in the know, the trick is to find a reliable regular source of materials which is no easy trick.


Agreed!

There's plenty of medium-high grade that is out of the realm of the garage refiner....but there's very little good material that's refinable by the little guy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm in this because I love to learn, and these processes intrigued me to no end. And if that someday pays the utility bill, I'll be extremely satisfied!
 
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