Accidentally 'infifthed' a batch of karat scrap. Can I proceed to nitric anyway?

[evanJ]

Hi! First time poster after a lot of reading and lurking, so forgive my sounding inexperienced.
I'm finally refining my first batches of karat scrap. My furnace is pretty small so I divided everything into two batches of roughly equal volume.
Each batch had a loss of about .1g, which I'm not really worried about because it was probably just bits of iron from clasps that didn't melt.

But - somewhere along the way I mixed up my math and ended up adding too much Cu to one of my batches.

Batch 1 was 15.3g of mixed karat, averaging 18 karat, I added 30.25g Cu, and ended up with 44.4g of 6 karat.
Batch 2 was 29.8g 14 karat, I added 42g Cu and 15g Ag, resulting in 86.7g of about 5 karat.

I rechecked my notes and I have no idea why my target weight for batch 2 got inflated... but, I did it. It's infifthed.

Can I proceed with adding nitric as normal? Would it help to mix the batches so that it averages out more?
Pic attached if helpful. 6k on the left, 5k on the right.

Thanks so much and sorry if this is a silly thing to stress over - but this will be my first time working with nitric and I want to make sure I'm not adding any extra risk.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi! First time poster after a lot of reading and lurking, so forgive my sounding inexperienced.
I'm finally refining my first batches of karat scrap. My furnace is pretty small so I divided everything into two batches of roughly equal volume.
Each batch had a loss of about .1g, which I'm not really worried about because it was probably just bits of iron from clasps that didn't melt.

But - somewhere along the way I mixed up my math and ended up adding too much Cu to one of my batches.

Batch 1 was 15.3g of mixed karat, averaging 18 karat, I added 30.25g Cu, and ended up with 44.4g of 6 karat.
Batch 2 was 29.8g 14 karat, I added 42g Cu and 15g Ag, resulting in 86.7g of about 5 karat.

I rechecked my notes and I have no idea why my target weight for batch 2 got inflated... but, I did it. It's infifthed.

Can I proceed with adding nitric as normal? Would it help to mix the batches so that it averages out more?
Pic attached if helpful. 6k on the left, 5k on the right.

Thanks so much and sorry if this is a silly thing to stress over - but this will be my first time working with nitric and I want to make sure I'm not adding any extra risk.

Welcome to us.
The only risk is that the Gold will be much finer, maybe just like fine sand/mud.
Filter it well and dissolve the filter when you refine after.

 

[evanJ]

Ok, thanks!
I'll probably just triple check with stannous too in that case.
appreciate the response

 

[4metals]

Infifthed!!!! there's a new bit of refining lingo!

 

[goldshark]

Infifthed!!!! there's a new bit of refining lingo!

Probably done more than you know. Ask me how I know! Better to use Ag than Copper, fine filter indeed ( referring to Evanj question ). You could always re melt with higher purity Gold, to get to 6K, or slightly above is ok.

 

[pokermandown]

I have done that before too! I stannous is not where you are likely to lose values because it is not gold in solution, it is superfine solid gold. It is more likely some of the superfine gold slip through the filter. I would run in through the same filter twice, or just throw it in the stockpot and get it when you refine your waste. Also, Standard Gold filled is 1/20 12K gold or 2.5% gold. Brazilian is 1/30 18K gold or 2.5% so it should work just the same as standard gold filled.

 

[4metals]

Inquartation has been around for centuries and the ratio of silver to gold evolved until it settled at the portion referred to as "quarters". Even back in the day the chemicals were hard to come by so they worked to get the total quantity of nitric as small as possible. That ended at the 3:1 ratio.
Using copper simply insures you will need over 3 times as much nitric as you would need had you used silver. The only thing you will notice is the insoluble fraction, the gold, will be finer in particle size than if you had inquarted properly. And the end product will likely not be as pure as it would be if you had inquarted (or infifthed) in Silver.

We often learn from our mistakes, and as mistakes go, this is minor.

 

[Emryst]

In my experience having both silver and copper in base metals it seems the disolved copper forces the silver out as a percipate. I have not confirmed this yet as I have not worked the stock pots with the grayish cementation. You have to work with the gold you find in these days. Mostly gold filled I am finding.

 

[orvi]

Just let it settle for longer between washes, as amount of very fine fraction of the gold will be bigger. I used to pour all of the washes and leachate itself into bigger graduated cylinder (high column of liquid) and let it settle for couple days. Then decant and return this sediment to another batch. It is very advantageous to use siphoning over decantation - as layer of very light and easily duisturbable precipitate is very hard to decant sharply.

Less gold in the melt, finer it gets at the end. With decrease of Au content, you will inevitably march towards "violet abomination", when significant portion of gold would end as violet nanosuspension, which can easily take 2-3 days to somehow settle.