4metals said:
I was referring to the silver chloride which will encrust the karat gold and stop or hinder the dissolution. Some use ammonia to dissolve the chloride and others prefer sodium thiosulfate. What is your preference?
Neither of them.
The key is to maintain boil which in turn maintain dissolution and somewhat vibretional forces on the gold piece.
Another key is the frequent nitric addition to maintain strong AR which also dissolve part of the silver chloride.
I did mentioned in the original video that a condensation setup is needed so no PM's losses will occur.
Tonight, I took another video with regular yellow gold passed through the same process (though w/o real diamonds), it will take me some time to edit & upload it.
I did so since i truly think your point is important and i did not provided the whole picture with the original video. For that i thank you again.
On the 1 hour marker, heat was removed and the stones broke loose with just a gentle shake of the tube.
I reckon that different Stonesetting, karatage and deviation of the actuall alloy then what it marked at, will effect the time needed to complete the process, some may take well over an hour and some may take less...
As you would expect, unlike the white gold, the yellow gold piece did not fully dissolved, but just enough to brake loose the stones.
p.s. - I know of some local refinery the usses an ultrasonic to do just that, but not sure if this is a common practice or not.
goldsilverpro said:
I would think that some of the AgCl would re-dissolve in the strong AR.
Chris
With no intention to offend you in any way, I believe you overlooked a very important part of the demonstrated methodology.
Which is, that the nitric additions are supposed to be masured and added just enough to dissolve the metals, therefore leaving only a slight chance for for a possible minimal excess nitric.
Therefore, eliminating
almost completely the possibility for AgCl to re-dissolve.
This methodology, i learned from the best... i think you know who i'm talking about 8)
I went out of my way to emphasize this point both in the video and the article behind it.
In any case, the recommendation is to wash with Ammonia and re-refine again to ensure purity, so just in case someone will get "creative" and mess up with his nitric addition, he will still end up with good and fine product.