100 Ounces of pins

[tek4g63]

I want to start by saying that this will be a real time post. By real time, I mean my real time. So it may take much longer than it would if I were able to stay on top of it. But as a lot of you know, life gets busy.

I have 100 ounces of pins. I believe these pins to be high grade. I felt this would be a good way to find out for sure if they are.

I'm going to proces them using AP to recover the gold then HCL/CL to refine.

I thought about just posting this after I finished, to share my data but then I got to thinking that I'm still very new at this and posting it in real time may give another member time to stop me from making a mistake. I hope that is acceptable.

The pictures below are my pins ready for a soak in AP. It has taken a very long time to get these, and I'm very excited to see how much gold they give me.

Comments are welcome and encouraged! Thank you!

 

[tek4g63]

I had more time tonight than I thought I would so I went ahead and started the next step.

I put the pins in my reaction chamber (3.5 gal bucket). Added HCL, Peroxide, and a fish tank bubbler.

In the picture below you can see that the 1 galon of HCL that I used is most likely not going to be enough. I went ahead and got the reaction started and ill get another galon tomorrow. Sorry I didn't get a pic of after I added the peroxide, the fumes were rolling out pretty good and the breeze kept changing directions on me so I stired it all up, put the lid on and called it quits for the night.

 

[maynman1751]

If you have been reading and studying the forum, you probably know that AP is not the preferred way to go with pins and they look to be nice quality. It's going to take a lot of HCl and time to digest all of the base metals and leave you with a lot of waste, although the AP can be regenerated.
I'm thinking a sulfuric cell would be the way to go with this material, but I don't know your 'situation'. You can stop what you have started if you choose to go with a cell and drain off the acid and rinse and dry the pins until your cell is ready.
Just my thoughts on your post.

 

[jmdlcar]

Those pins look like they are from hard drive, cd-rom, floppy drive and motherboard ide/floppy/jumper if I'm right that took time to break off. They look good and clean. I will follow this cause I will do this some day.

 

[tek4g63]

Maynman, thank you for your advice. I had actually thought about building a cell and going that route untill I did more reasearch. At least 50% of these pins are "barrel type" similar to a female socket. The ID is so small that each of the pins would create a "cage" type of effect and the plating on the inside would not be stripped. So I would end up running the partally deplated pins in AP anyway. Plus, I prefer the AP process because of the "set it and forget it" ease. I know it uses more chemicles, but HCL is cheap and I'm set up to process AP waste to safely dispose of it.

This is a great example, in my opinion, for new members. Choose the process that best suits your needs. All have their up and down sides, but with a bit of reasearch and understanding of your life schedule, you will find what is best for you.

 

[Geo]

actually, if the pin is open on both ends it will strip the inside perfectly well. it just takes a little longer. ive ran the same type of pins many times. they had a stainless rod set on a spring. i had to pull each rod by hand but the cell did a good job on the inside with a good yield for pins that size and weight.

 

[kurt]

Cool -I just finished recovering the foils from 10 Lb of pins that I got from some telcom stuff which gave me a yeald of 34 grams of foils so about 3 grams per Lb. I use nitric simply because I get it for about $8 a gallon.

Kurt

 

[glondor]

Just a few pin foil photos. Inspiration for ya ! 8)

 

[tek4g63]

Glondor, thank you! That is inspiring! Looks like you used nitric, is that correct? I hope mine come that clean!

 

[glondor]

Yes, Nitric. Those are not washed yet. Still loads of tin and nickle in there, but they do look nice!! 8)

 

[butcher]

I would use my pickle jar and make nitric acid if I had that pile of pins, killing two birds with one stone. :lol:

 

[gold4mike]

More inspiration...

 

[tek4g63]

Thank you all for your great pictures. Keep them coming!

In perpetration for refining the foils from this run I thought I should practice the hcl/cl process. I had 1.3 grams of foils from a small batch of these pins that I ran to learn the AP process. I dissolved them in hcl/cl with no hang ups. But after letting it sit uncovered for 24 hours to drive off the chlorine there is a white sediment in the bottom. Before I filter and add water in preparation for dropping the gold I would like to know what the sediment may be. These pins have never seen solder, so we can probably rule out tin. I can't imagine that it would be silver either. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[kurt]

Pins are made of brass - tin is used to make brass - when you dissolve the brass to recover the foils you still get the same tin paste as you get from solder (as well as other base metal salts) You need to do a oxidation roast &/or incineration to convert the tin paste (&/or other base metal salts) to an oxcide - then treat with hot HCL to remove the oxcides.

If you don't do the roast/incinerate to foils from pins before dissolving foils it will result in value loss as the tin paste cause's some of the gold to form as a colliod when you dissolve the foils.

The gold colliod does not settle out - it can't be filtered out & it wont show up on a stannous test --- it's just lost.

Do a search (incinerate foils) it has been talked about many time here on the forum (Harold has stressed the importance of it repeatedly)

Skipping the oxcidation roast/incineration step - followed by hot HCL treatment equals value lost.

Kurt

 

[tek4g63]

The pins I ran were beryllium copper, not brass.

Thank you for the good info though. I will keep that in mind when running unknown base metal pins.

 

[etack]

I used a store brand bleach and got a white precipitate once; it looked like AgCl but the gold was from foils so no Ag was present. It might also be Pb.

found this on beryllium copper
http://www.busbymetals.com/pdf/guide_to_be_cu.pdf
it has some info on compositions of different alloys.
I would filter with a Charmin plug and go on.
Eric

 

[kurt]

Then you most likely have a copper salt - which still needs to be turned to an oxcide & eliminated befor dissolving the foils - which means doing an oxcidation roast/incineration.

Harold (& others including Hokes) has stressed the importance of this step over & over again (so don't take my word for it) Following Harolds wise instruction has made a huge difference in my end result.

Kurt

 

[tek4g63]

Thank you kurt. I understand. I meant no disrespect. I was only trying to give as much detail as I could in the short time I had to make that post.

I have read Hoke and I would trust Harold with my life not just my gold. He is a very wise man.

I am doing this as a hobby and although I have made a nice safe setup for the AP process and the use of HCL/CL, I am not currently set up for incineration. But if the white sediment is something that can only be avoided by incineration then I will have to expand my operation.

Thank you all for your help. All is progressing nicely with my 100 ounces of pings. If it keeps this pace it should be done in no more than 2 weeks.

 

[butcher]

White salts could be several things, silver chloride lead chloride (since your pins did not have solder most likely not these but I will discuss them, also it could just be simple table salt from the bleach in the reaction,

Copper I chloride is also a white salt, But the solution would have been green loaded with copper not the nice yellow gold chloride solution in your picture, (so you do not have copper chloride here),

How do we test or separate these, well let us see.

Table salt NaCl is soluble in cold water, (lead chloride, silver chloride or copper chloride is not).

After separating the salt with cold water we can separate the lead chloride which is soluble in very hot water (silver chloride is not soluble in hot water but is fluffy and takes some time to settle so if we have silver we keep solution hot but let silver settle. when water soluble lead chloride has been decanted and cooled it will again form white lead chloride precipitant.

Copper I chloride will convert to soluble copper II chloride in HCl, and can also color solution blue to green even to brown depending on concentration, silver chloride is insoluble here.

Silver chloride will dissolve in ammonia (or household ammonium hydroxide),

----(Caution silver in this form is becomes a temperature or shock sensitive explosive if dried, so this solution will need acidified to precipitate out the silver and make solution safe), -----
Silver can be precipitated back out of this silver diammine solution by using an acid like Hydrochloric acid the silver will precipitate as white silver chloride powder, leaving a solution of ammonium chloride solution (if this solution is neutral pH, and not contaminated with other metals or solutions this solution can be filtered then crystallized and used as a reagent for precipitation of platinum).

My guess is you will find you have some salt NaCl white powder.

If solder is in the pins the incineration advice of foils is good advice, I personally would incinerate the pins before processing just to burn off the oils from them (to keep my solutions cleaner), if you have fire (torch, gas burner or very hot fire) and either corning casserole dish or stainless steel pan you have what you will need to incinerate, a charcoal fire and stainless pan would also work, not that much to incineration.

You’re not dealing with solder so you may not have any trouble working without an incineration here.

 

[tek4g63]

Thank you butcher. That is exactly the answer I needed. I should have asked how to test the white sediment instead of asking what it might be. A wise man once said"if your not getting the right answer, maybe your asking the wrong question".

I also had ruled out copper I chloride due to the color of the solution. I have formed copper I chloride in AP before due to the solution being fully saturated. Plus if it had too much copper my gold would have precipitated out as a black powder long before forming copper I chloride, correct?

I will try all the tests you described this weekend when I filter the solution. I suspect, like you, that it is just salt.

Thank you again!

(Edited for typo. My phones auto correct in action)