Hello again everyone. I'll just get right to it. I've been accumulating gold powder from each drop and putting it in the same beaker in hopes to melt a good sized button that had some decent weight to it. To this day, I've been successful once, and netted a button weighing half a gram... Yeah.. I kno.. The batches prior to tgat one were wrought with trouble due to ignorance. As I've learned, I became pretty good at making it all the way to the final step. The half gram button was basically a test melt from one of the drops, the axtual process escapes me, but I only use a select few that I seen to be able to handle with my level of experience and advice ftom you guys.
So here we are.. After the half gram melt I became confidant that this time was going to be different.. And it was, but I still failed. Basically, I glazed my crucible, put it into a little box I made out of refractory that captures heat quite nicely, and proceeded tk melt the powder with map gas. The torch I use is pretty gnarly.. A 15 dollar amazon number with a rose bud til designed for getting things real hot real fast. But it's hardly concentrated. It will heat a large area quite rapidly. So I'm firing it and time passes... And passes...... And paaaaassssssesssss.... I literally went through 1.5 bottles of map gas in about 2 hours, and no melt. I used borax to glaze the crucible and ddnt out any on top of the powder initially. I waited til I THOUGHT u saw it starting to melt, and sprinkled a light dusting on top. At that point.. I SWEAR i saw it start to finally melt. But nope. I ended up putting it in my foundry that will melt brass pretty quickly. It's a factory made Goliath of a machine with 4 burners. I shot a 2200 f temp at one time in the past while heat treating a plate. It stated in ttere for about 45 minutes. I removed it... The powder was still powder... There is absolutely something I did wrong.. Any ideas? One thing I can say is that it had a smell of something a kin to maybe.. Sewage? And there are pieces of slag with what appear to be glitter (gold?) contained within... Please help. I'm literally about yo givevuo on this whole hobby... Which really sucks as I've still got about 5 or 600 pounds of e scrap, I've built a vent hood, spent countless hours reading and researching and learning, decked out my wood/metal shop to sub as a lab.. I mean the fact that I'm considering just stopping out is a sign of how frustrated I truly am. As always, I'd appreciate any advice.. Straight forward.. Non sugar coated.. Here's what u did wrong dude... Type of stuff. Thanks yall
So here we are.. After the half gram melt I became confidant that this time was going to be different.. And it was, but I still failed. Basically, I glazed my crucible, put it into a little box I made out of refractory that captures heat quite nicely, and proceeded tk melt the powder with map gas. The torch I use is pretty gnarly.. A 15 dollar amazon number with a rose bud til designed for getting things real hot real fast. But it's hardly concentrated. It will heat a large area quite rapidly. So I'm firing it and time passes... And passes...... And paaaaassssssesssss.... I literally went through 1.5 bottles of map gas in about 2 hours, and no melt. I used borax to glaze the crucible and ddnt out any on top of the powder initially. I waited til I THOUGHT u saw it starting to melt, and sprinkled a light dusting on top. At that point.. I SWEAR i saw it start to finally melt. But nope. I ended up putting it in my foundry that will melt brass pretty quickly. It's a factory made Goliath of a machine with 4 burners. I shot a 2200 f temp at one time in the past while heat treating a plate. It stated in ttere for about 45 minutes. I removed it... The powder was still powder... There is absolutely something I did wrong.. Any ideas? One thing I can say is that it had a smell of something a kin to maybe.. Sewage? And there are pieces of slag with what appear to be glitter (gold?) contained within... Please help. I'm literally about yo givevuo on this whole hobby... Which really sucks as I've still got about 5 or 600 pounds of e scrap, I've built a vent hood, spent countless hours reading and researching and learning, decked out my wood/metal shop to sub as a lab.. I mean the fact that I'm considering just stopping out is a sign of how frustrated I truly am. As always, I'd appreciate any advice.. Straight forward.. Non sugar coated.. Here's what u did wrong dude... Type of stuff. Thanks yall