Non-Chemical Anyone grind their plated/filled scrap?

[beekrock]

I was just curious if anyone here simply takes a rotary Dremel to their gold filled/plated items before anything else. I would imagine that it would cut the acid costs down considerably when it's time to dissolve.

Or, would it just be too time consuming to do so?

 

[lazersteve]

I would not advise breathing the grinding dust from old gold filled items as most older gold filled items have human skin and possible pathogens found in the crevices. I personally wear a good dust mask and nitrile latex gloves when working with gold filed scrap.

Secondly, you will never get all of the gold out of the crevices or odd surfaces.

Hot 35% nitric acid is the way to go in my opinion.

I sell a DVD on refining gold filled scrap that covers all of the stages of refining gold filled scrap including the recover of the silver. You can buy it from my web store link below.

Steve

 

[Harold_V]

I was just curious if anyone here simply takes a rotary Dremel to their gold filled/plated items before anything else. I would imagine that it would cut the acid costs down considerably when it's time to dissolve.

Or, would it just be too time consuming to do so?

You must have a lot of time on your hands.
If you allow your recovery efforts to be reduced to that kind of activity, you won't make enough to cover electricity, let alone pay for chemicals. There are methods for handling these things that are productive and not labor intensive, with the added bonus of yielding the stripped base metals, which have a ready market.

Harold

 

[Lino1406]

Grinding - in this case - will not save acid - the contrary
considering the possibility of removing values without
dissolving the whole mass of base metals

 

[capt_dugout]

would there be any advantage to crushing the material other than management of material like fitting into containers

 

[Lino1406]

is needed, and impotrtant, only when the values are hidden
(not the case of outer plating)