Does gold foils weigh less than melted gold?

[cosminlala]

Hi golden friends. First topic here.
Here is my short question:

I just recovered my first gold foils from over 100 ram sticks. Didn't lost any foil. When the filter papers dried out i cleaned them almost without any traces. But... My scale shows that there are only 0.7 grams of foils and all over the internet i found out (mosty on this forum) that from that amount of ram sticks i should've expected from 1-3 grams. (i got pretty old sticks). My scale could be broken but... If the foils weight 0.7 after i will melt it should i expect the scale to show more gold?

At any quantity, does gold foils weigh less before the melting process than after?

Regards

 

[the iron dwarf]

the gold on the fingers is not all the gold you had, the chips often contain some too but that is another process for you to read about.
are you going to just melt the foils or are you going to refine the gold first, the foils could be plated on another layer of metal over the copper you have dissolved.
did you trim off the gold plated fingers to avoid the problems caused by solder?

the gold will not weigh more when melted than the foils do

 

[cosminlala]

Of course i trimmed them first. I'm not gonna refine the foils because i don't have acces to nitric acid.
And about the chips, i had about 800-850 grams (about 2 pounds) of them. I found out that i have to incinerate them first, i did this, but i don't know what to do with the shiny pieces of metal i got from them.

Too bad... hope my scale is broken.

Thank you!

 

[MarcoP]

By melting the foils the resulting melt should weight less as foils keep some humidity in them.
By simply boiling your foils you will get impurity out, thus weight loss.
If you refine your foils before melting, weight will drop but gold will raise in purity.
If you then re-refine you will experience again weight loss and higher purity.
Then you will need some flux and again, weight loss and purity increase.

Probably from 0.7 grams of foils you will end up with 0.2gr 999 gold? I still didn't melt any so my experience is nil.

I believe some of your gold is dissolved in solution, filter the remaining solution and add copper to cement it as black powder. But if you are going to reuse the leach you will get the gold back in the next run as more copper getting in solution will push the gold out of it, again as black powder.

 

[artart47]

Hi Cosminlala!
Youcan expect to recover and refine about one and a half -two grams of high purity gold from one pound of the fingers you cut. It depends on the type of memory they came from.
artart47

 

[the iron dwarf]

at the moment keep the chips, later read up on dealing with them and get a little more gold.

there are threads on this forum about, this one may help http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827

 

[nickvc]

Do some more reading and research, you dont need nitric to refine foils!

 

[archeonist]

Of course i trimmed them first. I'm not gonna refine the foils because i don't have acces to nitric acid.
And about the chips, i had about 800-850 grams (about 2 pounds) of them. I found out that i have to incinerate them first, i did this, but i don't know what to do with the shiny pieces of metal i got from them.

Too bad... hope my scale is broken.

Thank you!

Be aware of the health dangers that are involved when incinerating. Flame retardants, smoke, dust, you really have to know what you are doing to get that litlle bit of gold out.

 

[rickbb]

He only posted 3 times 7 years ago, not likely to see your post.