hardrock said:
I've been off mining for a month, I put a drop of nitric on the bars, just a slight reaction, it turned grayish white.
What did the solution do? Color is important. Any brown fumes from the applied drop? Bubbling? If gold was significant, it would have done nothing, or at the most, turned the surface a brown color, with the solution changing color very little, if at all.
put a small piece in AR and dropped out some Au.,
That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you put an alloy in AR, assuming silver isn't excessive, gold shouldn't *drop out*. AR dissolves gold, and, given the right circumstances, it remains in solution. That may not be true if there's an abundance of base metal present, however, but then the gold isn't generally quick to dissolve in such a case. When it does, it will eventually be cemented as a dark brown to black powder, however.
Did you test the solution with stannous chloride?
I've been refining placer gold by AR and every time I take it to the Au. buyer they come up with a different Kt., it's .18 to start, and they say it's only .22 after it's done, and if I send someone else in it's only .18, depends whose working. I've done the same batch
in AR twice and get different test results, am I doing something wrong, or getting screwed? I've been mining for 35 years and refining off and on for only 3 years. also, whats the best precipitant?
That, too, makes no sense. First off, one does not discuss fine gold in terms of karat.
If you do a reckless job of (actually) refining, you should expect something in the vicinity of 98%, even with poor handling. To suggest that you have only 22K isn't reasonable. Leads me to think that you are not really refining, but melting and fluxing. Can you be more descriptive of what you're doing? As stated, your comments would be akin to asking how big is a rock?
Not trying to be rude---but if you expect anything useful in the way of a response, you must learn to disclose information that details what you are doing.
Harold