Ebay Refining Video - Poor Mans AR = Yield low?

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K

koebeef

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 7, 2009
Messages
68
Location
Montreal
Hey all before I luckily stumbled upon this site I bought a step by step video of a guy doing poor mans AR in his backyard. I will list the materials and the steps he used because personally I think he did not get enough out of what he did.

3 lbs fingers and 1 lb broken p1 cpu into bucket
-1/2 lb sod nitrate mixed in 2 cups of boiling h20 poured over material.
-Mixes in 4 cups HCL/Muriatic, leaves it 12 hours
-Makes Stannous Chloride with silver solder and muriatic
-Tests for gold in the liquid
-Places pillow around another bucket with a bungee cord uses as filter and pours through....rinses all chips with water and filters that into the mix as well.
-Slowly adds Urea until it stops fizzing
-Mixes 2 TBSP SMB with 8oz H2O to Precipitate Gold out
-Washes the mud a few times after emptying liquid to another bucket.
-Mud mixed with tbsp of BORAX??
-Places into firebrick and works on it for about 2 hpurs with a propane torch.
-Ends up with a 3g button.

Sounds like a low yield to me. Is this process flawed in any way?
 
Was the dissolution done after 12 hours? The Time it takes is not as important as is the job completed.

With no effort made to remove base metals first losses should be expected. Precipitation may not be complete and what is recovered will not be pure.

Gold solution trapped in pillow filter??? (big possible loss)

You did not mention testing the solution after precipitating for remaining gold. 2 TBSP may not have been enough SMB. (possible loss)

A fire brick is not a good substitute for a melting dish. (possible loss)

A small amount of careless can add up to big losses real fast.
 
I used basically this same procedure years ago. Even before this forum came about.
It worked pretty good the first time (got a bead of gold).
The next time I tried it, I could not get the gold to come out of solution.
If I remember right, both times I was just doing fingers.
Randy
 
I have seenthis think on ebay called the unbelieveable firing object which seems to be some sort of furnace. Has anyone tried this or does anyone have any better methods than the melting dish and the torch?
 
I believe what you are referring to is little more than a hollowed out fire brick and torch. You can achieve the same thing by stacking fire bricks into a box like form, returning some of the radiant heat to your melt dish.
 
does anyone have any better methods than the melting dish and the torch?
Click to expand...
You could use a small propane furnace, and a crucible. Use 1 prt precipitate, and 3 prts flux. Do not fill the crucible more than 1/4, preferably 1/3, of the way full, so that boil overs can be avoided. When all is fused(molten), pour to a warm lightly oiled mold, and let cool. When cool, turn the mold over. The slag and Bullion should fall out. Wearing eye protection, and using a hammer, remove the slag by turning the mass on its side and tapping, (or striking if necessary) the contact point of the slag and Bullion. The slag should pop free. This method may not be better, but it works. I hope that this has been of some help. Sincerely; Rick.
 
koebeef said:
does anyone have any better methods than the melting dish and the torch?
Click to expand...
In my opinion, unless you have huge volumes to melt at one time, well in excess of 50 ounces, there is no such thing as a better method than a torch. I am speaking of melting gold, not silver. For silver, a furnace tends to be a better choice because of silver's ability to absorb oxygen.

Harold
 
Richard36 said:
Why wouldn't a 15 or 30 oz crucible with an ounce or less of precipitate and the required flux be an option? Rick.
Click to expand...
It is an option, but not a good one if you torch melt. Further, I do not recommend flux for melting pure gold. Only a flux lined dish. If shot is the intended product, flux is nothing but trouble, and is unnecessary. A flux covering on the melting dish, enough to permit the gold to flow easily, is all that is needed. If, towards the end of melting, the gold isn't forming a common mass, a few bits of borax sprinkled on the troublesome area will solve that riddle, without providing too much borax.

As for torch melting using a crucible---the risk of over heating the torch tip is real----plus the design of the crucible insures that you will lose some of the fine gold powder by the turbulence of the flame. It is very hard to beat a melting dish-----which is why they are commonly available for the purpose.

Furnace melting small volumes of gold is a waste of time and resources. You can have ten ounces of pure gold melted and poured to shot long before a furnace of any design is up to heat. The sole exception might be an induction furnace, but who amongst home refiners has the luxury of an induction furnace?

This is yet another example of where you benefit by moving away from what are very acceptable practices in assaying, but not necessarily good for refining. That, of course, is just my opinion. The methods I endorse are the ones I used, all of which were determined by failures of other methods. Others may or may not agree.

Harold
 
In my experience, I much prefer a gas fired crucible furnace. The last refinery that I owned, I did use torch melting for all my pure gold, although I would have preferred a small gas furnace, dedicated for just pure gold. The gas furnace I did have was used for many things - silver, inquartation, etc. - and it would have contaminated the pure gold. That's the only reason I used a torch. I do think the torch is good for small lots, but I would personally define that as anything less than 10 oz. One of the reasons I preferred the furnace was that it's much better for cleaning slightly off-purity gold. I was almost always successful at doing this, when needed, with a torch, but it's much easier to do in a crucible furnace.
 
I saw here that some people are not getting there gold hot enough

Is Propane/Ox good enough ?


Thanks
 
The furnace that I use is a small propane fired unit. As far as Oxy-propane for melting Gold goes, I do not see a problem with it, and yes, it would be more than sufficient, as far as heat needed goes. It will cut 1/2" plate steel, so I am quite sure that it will melt Gold just fine. If there is an issue with using it to melt Gold, I am unaware of it. Rick.
 
As for torch melting using a crucible---the risk of over heating the torch tip is real----
Click to expand...
I was refering to using a small propane furnace to melt small batches, then cast the melt as Bullion and slag. Not melt the mass with a torch. lol. Somewhere along the way a misinterpretation of what I was saying took place. Not an issue though. Just wanted to make clear what I was saying. Rick.
 
Richard36 said:
As for torch melting using a crucible---the risk of over heating the torch tip is real----
Click to expand...
I was refering to using a small propane furnace to melt small batches, then cast the melt as Bullion and slag. Not melt the mass with a torch. lol. Somewhere along the way a misinterpretation of what I was saying took place. Not an issue though. Just wanted to make clear what I was saying. Rick.
Click to expand...
It's good to clear the air, so others are on the same page. I am likely the source of the misinterpretation due to my post suggesting that there is not a better system than a torch. I used both methods and quickly came to hate the furnace.

Because my preference was the torch, I tend to think that's what others use, too, but I realize that is not the case. GSP covered a very real problems when using a furnace--which is most likely used for all kinds of things, not just melting pure gold. If a furnace would be the choice for others, I strongly recommend that a crucible cover be a part of the operation, to limit, or avoid, contamination in the furnace.

Harold
 
If a furnace would be the choice for others, I strongly recommend that a crucible cover be a part of the operation, to limit, or avoid, contamination in the furnace.

Harold
Click to expand...
How and why would using a furnace for multiple things put contaminants into the melt, as long as it is clean without any debris to be blown around inside it, and therefore end up in the crucible to produce contamination? Still, a cover is a good idea. What about an electric model for those who own them? The more I read, and the more that I ask, the more validity I see in the statement made by Clark Sable on "The Refiner". "Their techniques are like fingerprints, if you will, and recognized by the chemicals and techniques utilized." Rick.
 
The atmosphere in a furnace is anything but clean, and the lining tends to be dirty as well. While the risk of contamination may be small, if your target is high purity gold, it's always a good idea to take preventive measures to insure you don't get contaminated. That would be particularly true of a furnace where cupelling is performed. Lead fumes are easily absorbed in molten gold, with less than desirable effects.

I think you'd have to look at this much the same way you're supposed to look at mercury. It is claimed that open containers of mercury are constantly evaporating, so the near environment will test positive for its presence.

You simply have to have a different mindset if you expect gold of high purity. Lou has posted on this very subject. It's not easy to achieve.

Harold
 
Harold said:
The atmosphere in a furnace is anything but clean, and the lining tends to be dirty as well. While the risk of contamination may be small, if your target is high purity gold, it's always a good idea to take preventive measures to insure you don't get contaminated. That would be particularly true of a furnace where cupelling is performed. Lead fumes are easily absorbed in molten gold, with less than desirable effects.
Click to expand...

Right on , Harold. When we're trying to get up to 999.9 gold, we're not talking about much contamination to spoil it. Every day, I melted silver in my crucible furnace, since I was running silver cells. I tried melting pure gold in it several times, but it always got contaminated with silver. You can clean base metals out of the gold in a melt with fluxes, but not silver. I hate using a cover on the gold, whether it is a lid or a flux cover. My system of cleaning gold in the melt required being able to see the surface of the gold at all times.

My cupelling was always done in an electric box furnace or a gas fired muffle furnace. You can't cupel very well in an crucible furnace because the blast will tend to blow the molten lead out of the cupel. Also, cupelling must be done in an oxidizing atmosphere and that's hard to do unless it's kept away from the flame. The oxygen is best controlled by using a box or muffle furnace. You can crack open the door a smidge to allow a little air in. I also drilled a hole in the back of the box to produce an air flow across the top of the cupels.

Besides the very possible lead contamination, a box furnace or muffle is a poor way to melt pure gold. You have to pull the crucible out in order to see into the crucible. Even if the gold is super pure and needing no cleaning, you may have to make flux additions. Unless the crucible was superhot, the gold will quickly solidify and you can't really tell how pure it is. It just doesn't work very well.
 
Thanks Harold, GSP. I have never pursued .999 purity due to the fact that in "Hank Chapman, Jr's" book, " How to smelt your Gold and Silver", it states that it is a fellony to refine to that purity without a license from the "Federal Reserve", and I could never get in contact with anyone from there in order to inquire about getting such a thing. Thanks for the advice, and input. Sincerely: Rick.
 

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