Drowningbodacius
Well-known member
Can I use borax laundry boosters ti glaze a crucible
can i...
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You can try. It fluffs up quite a bit.
maynman1751
Well-known member
If you are talking about 20 mule team borax, that's what I use.
steyr223
Well-known member
Here's a stupid question
What have you used in the past?
As usual I take one process I learned that works
and don't even consider any other way(20 mule borax)
I guess I'm about to learn something
Steyr223 rob
What have you used in the past?
As usual I take one process I learned that works
and don't even consider any other way(20 mule borax)
I guess I'm about to learn something
Steyr223 rob
Drowningbodacius
Well-known member
yep 20 mule team is what i bought. this is my first time glazing a Melting dih and the first time ive ever used a melting dish. i cant wait to melt my first button :lol:
maynman1751
Well-known member
Use just enough to glaze the dish. Too much and you will have a puddle that the gold will stick to. Remove the gold bead as soon as it sets (turns back solid).
Drowningbodacius
Well-known member
i was wonderig if someone could put up a couple pics of a glazed dish so i now what to shoot for?
This is a porcelain crucible and won't be what you use with a torch, but if you will look at the surface of the crucible you will see the glazing and the light reflecting off of it. I heat the dish slowly with a torch at first so it doesn't crack and the while it's hot i rotate the dish sprinkling small amounts of borax over the surface evenly like you would add salt to your food. Then heat it to help spread and melt the borax. Use very small amounts and if you need to add more you can. Just don't over do it. All your looking for is a slick coating, nothing more.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=18063&mode=view
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=18063&mode=view
The shine from that picture hurt my eyes.
Drowningbodacius
Well-known member
tnks palladium for the photo im going to glaze and melt my first batch of recovered Au tomorrow...... uhhm i know about using the stainless steel bowl with water to make shot but can any one give me pointers and tips so i dont kill myself by having a accident the stainless steel bowl ill be using is a wide rimmed 7 and a half inch deep bowl is this good enough os should i use something else. i ask this cause safety safety safety first is my main concern. also what would be a good utensil to use to handle my melting dish? I've seen people use vice grips but im afraid i might break my ceramic melting dish
Attachments
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
Channel locks work good for handeling the dish.
I wouldn't worry about breaking the dish with the pliers. You will crack it with heat before you do that. It's a learning process like everything else.
I wouldn't worry about breaking the dish with the pliers. You will crack it with heat before you do that. It's a learning process like everything else.
Geo
Well-known member
if you pour too rapidly, the metal will create a column of steam in the water and pour straight to the bottom and puddle up. pour slowly in as big a circle as you safely can will make a decent shot from that close. if you put the pan at the bottom of a five gallon bucket and fill it with water and pour through that into the pan it may work better and make prettier shot.
Heat any tool you pick the hot dish up with, the tool should also be clean and not all grubby with grease from working on your car, or full of iron filings from working in the shop, iron tools can also be or become magnetic and may pick up metal filings.
The surrounding area should be clean like if melting in a welding shop, you do not want to blow iron dust from your grinder into the refined gold your melting.
Outdoors or where the fumes are carried away.
What the dish sits (some things absorb heat and will take heat from your dish and your melt).
What type of torch your using will make a big difference, propane or mapp gas can have a large flame even when adjusted on low (easier to blow away fine powder), propane gives less heat than Mapp gas, and may need dish sitting on an insulating material not a heat absorbing material, and if heat can be confined around the dish (like a furnace around the dish, stack of fire brick, or even a ceramic fiber wool blanket refractory insulation holding heat around the dish.
An acetylene oxygen torch you can choose different tips for your torch have better control of flame size, and heat adjustments, you can also set the torch to oxidizing or a reducing flame, this torch has little trouble producing the heat needed.
Drive moisture from your dish before using it (sit it on a wood stove to drive moisture out of its pores) or heat it up slowly by some other method, moisture in the dish and heating it to fast can crack the dish.
Glaze the dish just a very fine coat of borax, heating the dish to red hot before sprinkling borax on the dish and then using the torch to help spread the fluffy borax around as it melts, the less borax you use the better, but you want all areas of the inside of the dish to have a fine glaze of borax coating.
Begin heating the dish with your torch focused on the outside of the dish, circling the dish with your flame getting the dish red hot (we do not want to blow the fine metal out of the dish with our flame), keep the torch as low as possible but still hot enough to get the dish red hot, as you focus the torch on the outside of the dish the metal powders will begin to drive off moisture water then acids, getting the dish red hot begins to fuse the powders from closest to or touching the dish, when powders begin to fuse your can bring the torch more to focus on the powders just let the flame tips of the torch lick the powder, after powders fuse together you can bring the torch in closer, when the powders begin to melt adjust your torch to high heat, get the blue part of the flame up close to the gold, keep the torch encircling the dish and the gold, use the torch small blue flame and pressure to push beads from the rim or lip of the dish down into the bottom center of the dish, use the flame to push all of the beads forming into one molten blob of gold, make this blob run around your dish picking up other small beads of gold in the dish, also if your torch will not roll this molten metal around the dish the bottom of it is most likely not hot enough we want that dish bottom to be glowing red hot also, after we get it to roll around for a little while we can pick up the dish if the pliers have cooled back down we can heat them a little more with the torch (but do not blow dirt from the tool into your gold, or let the gold cool and freeze in the dish).
Pick up the hot dish while still heating with the torch make that gold roll in the flame and heating the dish red hot so once you pour the cold does not get to a cold lip of the dish and freeze, push the gold out of the dish with you flame into your hot well carbon sooted mold, hot graphite mold, water bucket if pouring shot or whatever your pouring the gold into, or you can let the gold cool in your dish.
Do not sit this dish on a cold surface all of a sudden.
Now I know I forgot something to say here.
The surrounding area should be clean like if melting in a welding shop, you do not want to blow iron dust from your grinder into the refined gold your melting.
Outdoors or where the fumes are carried away.
What the dish sits (some things absorb heat and will take heat from your dish and your melt).
What type of torch your using will make a big difference, propane or mapp gas can have a large flame even when adjusted on low (easier to blow away fine powder), propane gives less heat than Mapp gas, and may need dish sitting on an insulating material not a heat absorbing material, and if heat can be confined around the dish (like a furnace around the dish, stack of fire brick, or even a ceramic fiber wool blanket refractory insulation holding heat around the dish.
An acetylene oxygen torch you can choose different tips for your torch have better control of flame size, and heat adjustments, you can also set the torch to oxidizing or a reducing flame, this torch has little trouble producing the heat needed.
Drive moisture from your dish before using it (sit it on a wood stove to drive moisture out of its pores) or heat it up slowly by some other method, moisture in the dish and heating it to fast can crack the dish.
Glaze the dish just a very fine coat of borax, heating the dish to red hot before sprinkling borax on the dish and then using the torch to help spread the fluffy borax around as it melts, the less borax you use the better, but you want all areas of the inside of the dish to have a fine glaze of borax coating.
Begin heating the dish with your torch focused on the outside of the dish, circling the dish with your flame getting the dish red hot (we do not want to blow the fine metal out of the dish with our flame), keep the torch as low as possible but still hot enough to get the dish red hot, as you focus the torch on the outside of the dish the metal powders will begin to drive off moisture water then acids, getting the dish red hot begins to fuse the powders from closest to or touching the dish, when powders begin to fuse your can bring the torch more to focus on the powders just let the flame tips of the torch lick the powder, after powders fuse together you can bring the torch in closer, when the powders begin to melt adjust your torch to high heat, get the blue part of the flame up close to the gold, keep the torch encircling the dish and the gold, use the torch small blue flame and pressure to push beads from the rim or lip of the dish down into the bottom center of the dish, use the flame to push all of the beads forming into one molten blob of gold, make this blob run around your dish picking up other small beads of gold in the dish, also if your torch will not roll this molten metal around the dish the bottom of it is most likely not hot enough we want that dish bottom to be glowing red hot also, after we get it to roll around for a little while we can pick up the dish if the pliers have cooled back down we can heat them a little more with the torch (but do not blow dirt from the tool into your gold, or let the gold cool and freeze in the dish).
Pick up the hot dish while still heating with the torch make that gold roll in the flame and heating the dish red hot so once you pour the cold does not get to a cold lip of the dish and freeze, push the gold out of the dish with you flame into your hot well carbon sooted mold, hot graphite mold, water bucket if pouring shot or whatever your pouring the gold into, or you can let the gold cool in your dish.
Do not sit this dish on a cold surface all of a sudden.
Now I know I forgot something to say here.
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
butcher said:
Don't drop your dish in your bucket of water. 8)
:lol: yep probably a lot of things I forgot.
Thanks, they would make it much simpler and solve a lot of problems, and keep the gold cleaner.
I guess I am going to have to bend some heavy gauge wire and make me one of those.
I guess I am going to have to bend some heavy gauge wire and make me one of those.
I think they might be made of or have chrome or something in them. I know the metal hasn't weakened any. If you used some type of regular wire or something it might not hold up to the thermal cycling and my become weak at some point. Don't know it's just a thought. I've learned all these things by reading here and trial and error. I use to try and Macgyver a lot of things, not that there is anything wrong with it, but once i found out that if i have the right tools at my disposal and the right knowledge from here on the forum, this stuff is easier to do. Sort of like a surgeon with the proper tools operating on a patient. Nurse!, hand me that scalpel. "We don't have a scalpel doctor." Ok then hand me that butter knife. :shock:
Another trick i do with one of my melting dishes is about half an inch from the top lip i drill a small hole for pouring shot. Most people use a separate dish and have to heat it, hold it in place over the water, what have you. I melt the gold in the dish keeping it tilted slightly away from the side with the hole. Not that it will spill out because you can almost fill the dish up because of the location of the hole. Once the metals ready i tilt the dish while heating the hole and it run through like mercury through your fingers. Makes nice little bb's.
Another trick i do with one of my melting dishes is about half an inch from the top lip i drill a small hole for pouring shot. Most people use a separate dish and have to heat it, hold it in place over the water, what have you. I melt the gold in the dish keeping it tilted slightly away from the side with the hole. Not that it will spill out because you can almost fill the dish up because of the location of the hole. Once the metals ready i tilt the dish while heating the hole and it run through like mercury through your fingers. Makes nice little bb's.
Now you tell me after took a few pictures, went out and found some large gauge wire bent it to shape made some dish shaped curves with bent over ears and welded them together, they do not look as pretty as the picture but they hold the dish, oh well I will try these then order a pair and wait for them.
