PARKER113
Well-known member
Hello forum members,
Thanks again for a wonderful form. I joined a few years ago and have had two decent refining seasons thanks to all of the information on the forum.
Well it's gold refining 2020 for me and I have a decent amount to work with.
I am doing chips, pins and some fingers.
My problem started last year with slow dropping gold, or gold just not dropping out of solution. I use AP for everything and hcl and water for washes and hcl and bleach to dissolve gold.
I saved a solution that wouldn't drop last year before my time ran out. It was gold plated pins from servers and computers. This year I decided to evaporate it down, add hcl and attempt to drop it again with smb that was dissolved in water. I ended up evaporating it down too long and it turned into dry crystals. Maybe some from smb and maybe some from the bleach I used for dissolving the gold foils in the first place.
I added hcl, dissolved the crystals, filtered tried to drop it, failed, and ended up cementing it out with copper bars.
I washed the fine reside with hcl a few times to get rid of any green color and washed with water.
I decided I want a decent button so I added a bit of gold powder that took to long to settle from dip chips, and some other clean black powder from cementing a gold solution last year.
I added those three together and washed with hcl twice and did not notice any color change so I water washed it with water, added HCL and started to add new all purpose bleach. I believe I used around 100ml in total squirting it in and stirring with a pipette
I was surprised by the bright red color. I tested with stannous and it was a yellow orange color. I let it sit over night with my other beaker of 1030 grams of 2 sided ram chips that I also used bleach to dissolve. It turned a nice deep yellow.
The next day I figured (after searching the forum for what might be the red color) to drop the gold out of the solution with smb since the chlorine would of left the solution. And deal with the pgms if there are any later. But I noticed a bit of gold at the bottom of the flask so I decanted it, added a bit of hcl and bleach to dissolve the bit of gold. Then added the two together, filtered, waited 15 min. Then added two tea spoons of smb to a small amount of water and added it to the solution and it turned a golden color. Nothing dropped.
I've been looking this up for a while now as I suspect that my problems dropping are due to ph but I can't find ph test strips or just to lazy to drive around.. Either too much water or too much hcl is what I've concluded.
So My other solution of chips also didn't drop anything. With that one i added double the amount of hcl before adding smb thinking maybe it needs to be more acidic.
It turned almost clear after adding the smb. Nothing dropped but a grain or two.
So now the orange solution was heated up and is sitting uncovered to possibly evaporate the leftover chlorine (if that's the problem)
And the other solution was heated up and is left alone to possibly drop the gold over the next few hours.
When I first started out using hcl and bleach, dropping with SMB worked like a charm. I got nice fast light brown drops. Now it's like everytime I try it is always a huge struggle. Either not dropping or dropping very fine useless powders that take forever to settle.
Could anyone point out what I might be doing wrong?
It should be extremely simple with the same results everytime if I add the right amount of hcl and let the chlorine evaporate off. Right?
Thanks guys!
Thanks again for a wonderful form. I joined a few years ago and have had two decent refining seasons thanks to all of the information on the forum.
Well it's gold refining 2020 for me and I have a decent amount to work with.
I am doing chips, pins and some fingers.
My problem started last year with slow dropping gold, or gold just not dropping out of solution. I use AP for everything and hcl and water for washes and hcl and bleach to dissolve gold.
I saved a solution that wouldn't drop last year before my time ran out. It was gold plated pins from servers and computers. This year I decided to evaporate it down, add hcl and attempt to drop it again with smb that was dissolved in water. I ended up evaporating it down too long and it turned into dry crystals. Maybe some from smb and maybe some from the bleach I used for dissolving the gold foils in the first place.
I added hcl, dissolved the crystals, filtered tried to drop it, failed, and ended up cementing it out with copper bars.
I washed the fine reside with hcl a few times to get rid of any green color and washed with water.
I decided I want a decent button so I added a bit of gold powder that took to long to settle from dip chips, and some other clean black powder from cementing a gold solution last year.
I added those three together and washed with hcl twice and did not notice any color change so I water washed it with water, added HCL and started to add new all purpose bleach. I believe I used around 100ml in total squirting it in and stirring with a pipette
I was surprised by the bright red color. I tested with stannous and it was a yellow orange color. I let it sit over night with my other beaker of 1030 grams of 2 sided ram chips that I also used bleach to dissolve. It turned a nice deep yellow.
The next day I figured (after searching the forum for what might be the red color) to drop the gold out of the solution with smb since the chlorine would of left the solution. And deal with the pgms if there are any later. But I noticed a bit of gold at the bottom of the flask so I decanted it, added a bit of hcl and bleach to dissolve the bit of gold. Then added the two together, filtered, waited 15 min. Then added two tea spoons of smb to a small amount of water and added it to the solution and it turned a golden color. Nothing dropped.
I've been looking this up for a while now as I suspect that my problems dropping are due to ph but I can't find ph test strips or just to lazy to drive around.. Either too much water or too much hcl is what I've concluded.
So My other solution of chips also didn't drop anything. With that one i added double the amount of hcl before adding smb thinking maybe it needs to be more acidic.
It turned almost clear after adding the smb. Nothing dropped but a grain or two.
So now the orange solution was heated up and is sitting uncovered to possibly evaporate the leftover chlorine (if that's the problem)
And the other solution was heated up and is left alone to possibly drop the gold over the next few hours.
When I first started out using hcl and bleach, dropping with SMB worked like a charm. I got nice fast light brown drops. Now it's like everytime I try it is always a huge struggle. Either not dropping or dropping very fine useless powders that take forever to settle.
Could anyone point out what I might be doing wrong?
It should be extremely simple with the same results everytime if I add the right amount of hcl and let the chlorine evaporate off. Right?
Thanks guys!
