A golden edge on the end of the year

[g_axelsson]

The characteristic pipe is also missing from your button. Your explanation of iron contamination may explain why.

I've seen a pipe pulled so deep it looks like a cliff--and the color within the pipe is breathtaking. Happens only with very clean gold.

When working with refined gold, everything must be clean---even the torch. The slightest thing can ruin a lot of hard work.

Harold

Now, this is a pipe!


It was sooo beautiful, sitting in my hand in the morning sun... 8)
The central pipe consists of a flat surface with raised edges that have sunk straight down. At the edge you can see fern like crystal growth in several places. In the picture you can see it at 4 o'clock.

And this is the back side, a golden moon. A thin surface of borax remains, but is only visible when looking through a pocket lens.


Re-refined with inquartation... will add more in a while.

I'm happy now!

/Göran

 

[jason_recliner]

Göran, that is amazing. I tip my hat to you sir.

 

[Anonymous]

Nice one Goran, I take it that's from the Pentium Pro haul?

By the way recently GSP alluded to the fern pattern on your original pic showing the presence of PGMs in the gold.

Jon

edit:

"Postby goldsilverpro » June 13th, 2015, 1:53 am

Usually, in my experience, fern patterns indicated PGMs. When I got a fern pattern, I re-did the gold. Too low melting temperatures can produce ferns."

 

[g_axelsson]

Just as you wrote, Jon, I remembered that GSP wrote somewhere that a fern like structure and a frosted surface could hint of palladium contamination and I started to suspect that it was what I had in my original button. So I wanted a method that could eliminate any palladium before precipitating the clean gold. Inquarting filled that goal.

So I brought out my cemented silver powder and started to melt 150g (probably with quite a lot palladium) and added the gold in the end. The molten alloy was poured into water and made some quite spectacular cornflakes. Some of the pieces were gold colored so I suspected that I didn't get a good mix. Another melt, mixing well and pouring it into water again... now I got a large piece among all others as I poured too fast. I definitely need more practice.

Anyhow, I started to run out of time but thought that I should try to treat it with nitric, any pieces that didn't dissolve I could remelt with some more silver. I still had pieces I suspected was high in gold.
I started treating the alloy with nitric (diluted down to 30%) but the reaction was quite slow so I put it on one of my coffee maker hot plate. Still slow to react so I took out a borrowed hot plate and increasing the heat slowly until I get a modest reaction. After a few hours the reaction had died down, so I exchanged the acid for fresh and ramped up the heat again.

The third time the reaction slowed down with a lot less color in the nitric so there probably were a lot of acid left. Now I washed off the brown clumps with water and boiling. With a spoon I tested the consistence of the gold and it just broke apart with no hard centers, it seemed the dissolving of the silver was perfect.

After a few boiling water washes I added hydrochloric acid and was greeted by a silver chloride cloud that disappeared within seconds. Then small bubbles appeared from the gold, remaining nitric had formed aqua regia and started to dissolve the gold.
I added some more nitric, keeping it low so I would have excess HCl. When the reaction (heated on a coffee maker hot plate) died down I poured off the gold chloride, diluted it with two parts water and filtered it with my vacuum filter equipment, first time I use it. It worked great and really fast compared to gravity filtering. The filter took a purple tone from silver chloride.

Second batch went the same way. Then the third batch with the left over gold started to slow down even when I added a bit of nitric acid. I thought it could be some pieces with undissolved silver that became inert in the AR.


... to be continued ...

 

[g_axelsson]

So I started to pour off the final gold chloride and I realized the pieces were just fluffy silver chloride clumped together. With the spray bottle I could disintegrate the clumps and there were no solid metal left. The nitric had penetrated every piece of my inquarted gold. The silver chloride ended up in the filter paper.

As I had used extra nitric in the last step I got a perfect opportunity to test sulfamic acid to destroy the excess nitric. I was surprised by the modest reaction, maybe I didn't have that much excess, I'll do some experiments some other times.
To precipitate the gold I used SMB and it happened without any drama, a thick layer of brown compact mud formed on the bottom of the beaker.

Then I went on to wash with HCl and water until I got no change in color.

Then drying and melting. When the button started to solidify and the pipe formed I realized I had manage to raise the purity and it was pure magic to see the pipe with the red glowing metal inside the button.


... well, that's all. :mrgreen:

Göran

 

[g_axelsson]

Nice one Goran, I take it that's from the Pentium Pro haul?

By the way recently GSP alluded to the fern pattern on your original pic showing the presence of PGMs in the gold.

Jon

edit:

"Postby goldsilverpro » June 13th, 2015, 1:53 am

Usually, in my experience, fern patterns indicated PGMs. When I got a fern pattern, I re-did the gold. Too low melting temperatures can produce ferns."

Thanks!

No, this is the gold from the start of this thread. I haven't had time to do anything with the processors yet, not even sorting them. My company have taken off this spring (AV installations and programming) and I've spent whole weeks out of town. The few hours during weekends have been spent to try to keep up with all fun scrap that's flown in lately... A car load of servers, several lasers and other equipment from the university, a +/- 10V 100A computer controlled power supply, two 5 Mbyte hawk disks and a full cabinet for a mini computer from 1978, all keepers except the servers. 8)
Now I have one week in Norway (vacation) and one in Denmark (work) then maybe I can find some time to process the CPU:s.
I have a vision of processing the CPU:s during summer and creating a number of buttons like the one above.

Göran

 

[glorycloud]

Very nice work Göran!!

 

[Silver Sliver]

Beautiful!

 

[MarcoP]

For sure your holidays are going to be great after this satisfying achievement

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Very nice Göran!

Dave

 

[Palladium]

Very nice!

 

[maynman1751]

Nice job Goran! Beautiful button! 8) :mrgreen:

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Nice looking button there. You should be proud of it.

 

[g_axelsson]

Thanks everyone, I really like my new button and I have a hard time putting it away. I just take it out again and again, just for looking at it. I can't get enough. :lol:

Göran

 

[solar_plasma]

You could wear it on a chain around your neck. Very nice! I hope to make my 12g button this week.

 

[machiavelli976]

The molten alloy was poured into water and made some quite spectacular cornflakes. Some of the pieces were gold colored so I suspected that I didn't get a good mix.

Not necessarily. Could be the result of an known phenomena called float zone diffusion which is used as a purifiyng method of metals and metaloids , named 'zone melting' .

It happens on gold inquarting recovering process when the pouring is done near the water surface. To avoid this , needed to be poured from a distance which allow cooling and pre cristalization of the falling drops.

I one , prefer to cool slowly as a long bar and cut it than in small pieces or thin slices .


Anyway , nice job !!

 

[g_axelsson]

The molten alloy was poured into water and made some quite spectacular cornflakes. Some of the pieces were gold colored so I suspected that I didn't get a good mix.

Not necessarily. Could be the result of an known phenomena called float zone diffusion which is used as a purifiyng method of metals and metaloids , named 'zone melting' .

It happens on gold inquarting recovering process when the pouring is done near the water surface. To avoid this , needed to be poured from a distance which allow cooling and pre cristalization of the falling drops.

I one , prefer to cool slowly as a long bar and cut it than in small pieces or thin slices .


Anyway , nice job !!

I learned a new thing today! Thanks, that could explain what I saw. I could still see some shiny surfaces in the nitric bath but they disappeared at the end. Probably so thin that they crumpled when the silver behind dissolved.

Göran

 

[machiavelli976]

You can see shiny surfaces of the flakes also if the inquarted gold has quite much undissoluble (regarded to nitric) PGM's , like platinum or rhodium .

In such situations , it may happen that nitric digestion to be unable to crack the flakes or chunks of the alloy , even if the acid penetrates the whole structure . So said , you'll got parted flakes of almost intact initial shape but of course much lighter in weight and with some shiny , slightly dull aspect .

It happened to me even to exagerate alloying ratio like ten to one , let's say... The unreacting PGM's keep away the gold to disintegrate in that grinded-coffee like, status .

 

[malfeces]

That is just beautiful! Good work!!! I can only imagine how heavy that must feel in your hand.

 

[g_axelsson]

It is a nice feeling. 8)

Göran