Hello members. I have a problem with my first batch. I stocked up a reasonable quantity of ram fingers, as well as plated pins, and processed them in 2 respective batches, using hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Following the advice of several smart folks on YouTube, I ended up with a ton of gold foils. After filtering everything quite well, I combined the foils from the 2 batches and set forth dissolving them. (It might be of importance that the concentrated foil mixture also contained pieces of green solder mask, and a few tiny capacitors that I didn't realize were in there, which in the end, came out Completely unscathed.)
My dilemma at this point isn't from combining the 2 batches or anything that might e been left in the mixture, or anything regarding the dissolving process. Although if anyone notices another problem I've likely created due to these things, I'm all ears. So, I dissolved the foils using bleach, and everything was looking exactly as it should've. I was quite excited to see the deep, golden color of my gold in solution. A stannous chloride test gave me an instant dark brown stain and I was elated. At this point, I received a service call. I'm a service tech for a boiler company and emergency service is our bread and butter. A bit annoyed, I left my solution on the table, covered it up, and went and knocked out the call. I was gone for about 4 hours. The whole time, the excitement of my first gold drop was almost too much to bear. It was all I could think about.
The moment I returned home, I went out to my "lab" and proceeded to drop the gold with smb. (Noteworthy : the smb had clumped up in the container quite seriously. I guess I had inadvertently left the lid off a few days ago when I was messing around out there. It took alot of convincing to get enough usable powder, and I actually had to use a blender to get it chopped up fine enough to use. Even still, there were plenty of small clumps that I ended up needing to use.) After what seemed to ME, an amature, to be too much smb, I finally got that I color change and witnessed this "heavy mud" fall to the bottom of the beaker, and I was so excited.
So far so good?? I noticed I had all kinds of stuff floating around in the solution, including some clumps of smb that hadn't dissolved. Then it hit me... I facepalmed so hard that I nearly knocked myself out... I was so excited to precipitate the gold, that I rushed home and performed the procedure.... WITHOUT FILTERING THE GOLD IN SOLUTION... Geez... How absent minded can one be?? So I feel like an idiot.. Furthermore.. I decided to smdo another stannous test on it, and the dark brown stain instantly appeared, indicating that there was still plenty of gold in solution...
So that's my dilemma.. I'm not going to touch it until I get some good advice on how to proceed, because before I ever got started with any of this.. When it was only an idea, I did a ton of research, and probably the most important thing I took from all of the preliminary reading, was that it's not a good idea to make assumptions or do anything that you're not absolutely positive about the expected result or reaction, when it comes to chemistry. I kind of like my family and neighbors and I don't want to be known in my neighborhood as that troublemaker who poisoned the block with mustard gas.
So u just need to know 1) can I disolve it again, given the abundance of smb? 2) do I filter this solution since there's still gold in it, and then process the muddy mixture somehow? How would the pros fix this careless mistake perpetrated by an excited amature, who really actually DID do his homework, yet still goofed in such a way.
Thank all of you for your advice. I understand that some admonishing is likely well on the way, but I can take a good butt chewing. So please help.
My dilemma at this point isn't from combining the 2 batches or anything that might e been left in the mixture, or anything regarding the dissolving process. Although if anyone notices another problem I've likely created due to these things, I'm all ears. So, I dissolved the foils using bleach, and everything was looking exactly as it should've. I was quite excited to see the deep, golden color of my gold in solution. A stannous chloride test gave me an instant dark brown stain and I was elated. At this point, I received a service call. I'm a service tech for a boiler company and emergency service is our bread and butter. A bit annoyed, I left my solution on the table, covered it up, and went and knocked out the call. I was gone for about 4 hours. The whole time, the excitement of my first gold drop was almost too much to bear. It was all I could think about.
The moment I returned home, I went out to my "lab" and proceeded to drop the gold with smb. (Noteworthy : the smb had clumped up in the container quite seriously. I guess I had inadvertently left the lid off a few days ago when I was messing around out there. It took alot of convincing to get enough usable powder, and I actually had to use a blender to get it chopped up fine enough to use. Even still, there were plenty of small clumps that I ended up needing to use.) After what seemed to ME, an amature, to be too much smb, I finally got that I color change and witnessed this "heavy mud" fall to the bottom of the beaker, and I was so excited.
So far so good?? I noticed I had all kinds of stuff floating around in the solution, including some clumps of smb that hadn't dissolved. Then it hit me... I facepalmed so hard that I nearly knocked myself out... I was so excited to precipitate the gold, that I rushed home and performed the procedure.... WITHOUT FILTERING THE GOLD IN SOLUTION... Geez... How absent minded can one be?? So I feel like an idiot.. Furthermore.. I decided to smdo another stannous test on it, and the dark brown stain instantly appeared, indicating that there was still plenty of gold in solution...
So that's my dilemma.. I'm not going to touch it until I get some good advice on how to proceed, because before I ever got started with any of this.. When it was only an idea, I did a ton of research, and probably the most important thing I took from all of the preliminary reading, was that it's not a good idea to make assumptions or do anything that you're not absolutely positive about the expected result or reaction, when it comes to chemistry. I kind of like my family and neighbors and I don't want to be known in my neighborhood as that troublemaker who poisoned the block with mustard gas.
So u just need to know 1) can I disolve it again, given the abundance of smb? 2) do I filter this solution since there's still gold in it, and then process the muddy mixture somehow? How would the pros fix this careless mistake perpetrated by an excited amature, who really actually DID do his homework, yet still goofed in such a way.
Thank all of you for your advice. I understand that some admonishing is likely well on the way, but I can take a good butt chewing. So please help.