Hi All,
I just finished making my first cell after watching steve's video, what a cool thing!!!
It works like a champ!! I can sit for an hour after work and watch the little bubbles, always aware they are money in the bank.
Steve, you were right about this being the best way to get the gold off the brass parts I have.
I Have run about 1000g of material so far. I did a rough check and found the first 462g I ran weighted 1.29g less after deplating so I am guessing around 1g of gold / 400g of material? Does that sound right?
Now, How do I know when the cell needs to be emptied? Will it stop de-plating or slow down? Also, I noticed a lot of black stuff floating around in my wash cup can I combine this with the cell contents at filtering time?
Last question- Most of what I am putting in the cell has some sort of clear coat lacquer on it, I soaked my first batch in thinners for awhile and that seemed to work ok but I noticed the parts that I did not soak also deplated they just took longer and the clear coat came off in a gummy glob. Will this gummy coating screw up the gold when it is time to refine or do you think it will just burn up? I have a small digital melter with graphite crucibles will this work better than the torch?
One final observation- I found some old transistors with gold plating on the wire so I twisted the leads together and put it in the cell. The gold flashed off the wire but I noticed a spot that was missed so I put it back in the cell, suddenly the fizzing became strong and went on for awhile. Taking it out I saw the bubbles coming out from under the metal cap. I cut the top off with side cutters and what do you know, there was a nice gold disk that was solid gold!!! It took about 1 1/2 - 2 minutes to desolve in the cell.
I cut some more open and found similar gold parts of various sizes. I don't know if cutting metal transitors is common but if you have them it's worth the 2 seconds it takes to slice the top off.
What a blast! Thanks Steve for the great videos!
John
I just finished making my first cell after watching steve's video, what a cool thing!!!
It works like a champ!! I can sit for an hour after work and watch the little bubbles, always aware they are money in the bank.
Steve, you were right about this being the best way to get the gold off the brass parts I have.
I Have run about 1000g of material so far. I did a rough check and found the first 462g I ran weighted 1.29g less after deplating so I am guessing around 1g of gold / 400g of material? Does that sound right?
Now, How do I know when the cell needs to be emptied? Will it stop de-plating or slow down? Also, I noticed a lot of black stuff floating around in my wash cup can I combine this with the cell contents at filtering time?
Last question- Most of what I am putting in the cell has some sort of clear coat lacquer on it, I soaked my first batch in thinners for awhile and that seemed to work ok but I noticed the parts that I did not soak also deplated they just took longer and the clear coat came off in a gummy glob. Will this gummy coating screw up the gold when it is time to refine or do you think it will just burn up? I have a small digital melter with graphite crucibles will this work better than the torch?
One final observation- I found some old transistors with gold plating on the wire so I twisted the leads together and put it in the cell. The gold flashed off the wire but I noticed a spot that was missed so I put it back in the cell, suddenly the fizzing became strong and went on for awhile. Taking it out I saw the bubbles coming out from under the metal cap. I cut the top off with side cutters and what do you know, there was a nice gold disk that was solid gold!!! It took about 1 1/2 - 2 minutes to desolve in the cell.
I cut some more open and found similar gold parts of various sizes. I don't know if cutting metal transitors is common but if you have them it's worth the 2 seconds it takes to slice the top off.
What a blast! Thanks Steve for the great videos!
John
