Anyone else run out of gas

[Alabama938]

Ran out of gas, still seems to take an eternity to melt things.

 

[Elemental]

A quick question, where is your heat going in your system? Are you losing it to the crucible, air, etc? A few fire bricks to help keep your heat together might help with your future melts. Build a cave with them, and do your melts inside of it. If you're just using straight propane, you heat could just be blowing away. Just looking at the numbers, it shouldn't be the case though, propane burns at 1960˚C, gold begins melting at 1,064°C. The temperature is more than high enough, as long as you can retain the heat in the system. Hope this helps.

An example of what I'm talking about:
Lynn Manufacturing Fire Heat Insulation Brick - Soldering Torch Welding Insulating Block, Low Thermal Conductivity - For Kilns, Forges, Furnaces, Solder - 2.5"x4.5"x9", Single Pack, 2300F-Rated, 3123P

by Lynn Manufacturing

Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848PBH82/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_7GX8BPFKQFS60K53DP43?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Elemental

 

[Alabama938]

I have a little cave of kaowool, MAPP gas, it’ll melt if I’m patient, then no more gas…but yeah this little 11g wafer sucks lol

 

[Elemental]

I was having issues melting silver with a torch at first. Switched to a table top furnace that works fairly well. It does eat crucibles like a kid with candy on Halloween. In hindsight I wish I would have just gotten an oxy-acetylene torch.

 

[Alabama938]

So I got some gas, melted her down and I have two questions for the forum…

First, I’ve never done the dilute sulfuric acid treatment, would that remove the flux or this surface oxidation looking finish?

Second, when I held the dish steady it literally started to crumble. How can I recover this gold? It’s like a thin layer, such small pieces. Facepalm

 

[Alabama938]

Forgot the picks

 

[butcher]

I would consider crushing the crucible into a fine powder and dissolve the gold from the powdered dish, powdering the dish would help to break the thin borax glass cover, give fewer problems with the clay dish holding acids or dissolved gold, and make washing and filtering less problematic

 

[Alabama938]

How does one crush something like that while containing the fine material? It is a glazed dish, should I dissolve the borax out first before using AR? Another oxidizer a better option?

 

[voidforged]

Dilute HCl will dissolve the borax, then just stick the whole thing in AR. No need to smash it up.

 

[Alabama938]

So it’s sitting in warm dilute sulfuric now…the gold bead and flakes are coming right off! Read some other posts before the HCl idea.

 

[Alabama938]

Well it worked like a dream, the sulfuric still makes me nervous so let’s hope that doesn’t happen again with the dish.

 

[snoman701]

Direct to AR is an awful way to do these guys. You'll never rinse all the gold out of the non-dissolved dust. Simply getting that whole thing red hot and pushing the gold around with a flame can collect most of it. Do it over top of a bigger melt dish. Small additions of soda ash will thin it out and help.

 

[Alabama938]

It should be fine now that the dish is cleaned to use AR after rinsing right? It’s such a small amount I’ll probably save it for a future batch of hot AR.

I was trying to use the melted glob maybe 12 g to roll around the dish to collect the edges and it just began crumbling while holding it with pliars. Luckily that cooled the dish down fast enough for the glob to solidify without spilling it.

It’s really neat all the tiny little gold balls at the bottom of the beaker, you can hear them rolling side to side.

Have you ever had this happen with a dish? I put well rinsed slightly damp gold powder as a clump in the center of a well glazed dish that I had used only once or twice…