epic fail!!! what do I do now???

xelexo
Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Geo your 2g/pound equal to 0.4% from kilogram. I have no doubt that there are better pins out there but for gold ingots sold on ebay gold content will be much lower than this. I have processed some of these one time I was led to believe they are from carat gold only to find out they were from pins later. Next few I did out of curiosity and I would not accepted them even if they would be offered to me for free. Time and cost associated with refining them will be more expensive than any gold recovered from them.
OP's friend probably bought them on ebay. If that is the cause he should write it off as a loss and move on.
 
I see that you only joined 2 days ago. The stock answer would be to tell your friend to stop what he is doing right away before he hurts himself or someone else. The question of dealing with these pins has been described many times over on this forum. If you really want to help your friend, use the search engine and go from there. There are many variables to deal with and by continuing without knowing what to expect is ludicrous. He needs to have a basic understanding of chemistry.

It could easily take months of study to get to where he needs to be. Many of these chemicals are dangerous in and of themselves and could easily create a deadly concoction when mixed. It would be easy to make an explosive mixture or a mixture which could conceivably give off cyanide gas. I hate to say this, but if he has unmarked bottles of chemicals laying around, he is playing Russian Roulette. That is one of the most stupid things I have heard in quite a while. Really. The best thing you can do is to slow him down or stop him completely while you still have a friend who is alive. I hope all ends up well for your friend. He could lose all the gold in that ingot, but if he survives, he would be miles ahead. Think about it. To be killed by something you don't know anything about except it might have some precious metals in it. At best, he would only have maybe a dollars worth of gold.
 
Bert I know most of the replies seem really negative but the guys are been honest and are trying to help you and your friend. If you or he do not want to read and study then my advice is to safely neutralise what has been already done and safely dispose of it.
Refining isn't a quick question and answer subject and the material in question is far from easy to recover and refine in the form it's in, there are no shortcuts someone has to learn the subject and that takes time and study and as the guys have said its rubbish material to start with, unmelted pins easy to do with a little study melted pins hard and not cost effective.
A search here on the forum will tell you this isn't the first time we have had newbies with exactly the same material and problems and the answers have always been the same, a waste of time and chemicals.
If your friend is serious about recovery and refining I'm afraid he is going to have to read and study there are no other options it's that simple.
 
bswartzwelder said:
I see that you only joined 2 days ago. The stock answer would be to tell your friend to stop what he is doing right away before he hurts himself or someone else. The question of dealing with these pins has been described many times over on this forum. If you really want to help your friend, use the search engine and go from there. There are many variables to deal with and by continuing without knowing what to expect is ludicrous. He needs to have a basic understanding of chemistry.

It could easily take months of study to get to where he needs to be. Many of these chemicals are dangerous in and of themselves and could easily create a deadly concoction when mixed. It would be easy to make an explosive mixture or a mixture which could conceivably give off cyanide gas. I hate to say this, but if he has unmarked bottles of chemicals laying around, he is playing Russian Roulette. That is one of the most stupid things I have heard in quite a while. Really. The best thing you can do is to slow him down or stop him completely while you still have a friend who is alive. I hope all ends up well for your friend. He could lose all the gold in that ingot, but if he survives, he would be miles ahead. Think about it. To be killed by something you don't know anything about except it might have some precious metals in it. At best, he would only have maybe a dollars worth of gold.
Click to expand...
Exactly! Exactly!

If that is a friend who needs the help, by you being here and speaking the terms in this field, make me think you may very well know more about refining than your friend. Or, you could be the one needing the help, and this is where you're at in your process. Hey!!!, it happened to all of us before. You make mistakes, and HOPEFULLY, you'll live to learn from it.

From all I've read about the initial problem, I knew it was time for that friend to simply put everything safely away until experience really sinks in and takes place. Experience needed first is "READING" Hoke's book and also being actively search and reading the forum and the topics, replies, post links, etc., There is no quick and fast way to refine. It all takes time. And if a person doesn't that to spare, then they need not do it at all. Some regular processes take days, and in some cases weeks. It's not an overnight ordeal when you're refining. You MUST get EVERYTHING RIGHT.

I also mentioned this in another post, and that was "whether it's you or your friend, you BETTER LEARN right now to "Label" your chemicals and powders. You/he are/is playing a losing game. If you remove ANY chemicals or powders to another container besides its original one, then you MUST label them. You MUST. Mix the wrong things together and ....... BBOOOOMMMMM! As they say... "It ain't worth it". Label. Label, Label.

Hopefully your friend will understand that if he can get this far and decides he screwed up, he should take the time to study and fix what he screwed up. Now that makes sense. I screwed up some solution before (I thought I did) but I let it sit for a few months, and then I went back to it because all I needed to do was to add a piece of copper to my solution. You see, I took a few months to learn that all I needed was copper. That time not rushing to complete the refining, I learned other refining methods and things during that same time and when I went back to finish what I stared, I went in with confidence and made it work and it did as its supposed to do. It also worked because I had patience, and it paid off, and it still does.

If your friend dedicate more time reading and studying more, he would soon say " Ohhhh, so that's what I did wrong" and now know how to fix it. As long as you never throw your solutions away, your material is still there. Get back to it some other time.

Hope this helps!
 
Hi Burt!
I see you've been advised to cement any gold out on copper, Let me make it easier to understand. You have an acid solution with several metals dissolved as chlorides. Copper chloride,lead chloride....and hopfully a little gold chloride. If you place a piece of copper in the solution, the acid will dissolve the copper untill any remaining acid has been nutralized. Then, It will begine reacting with any metal salts that are below copper in activity. Gold is below copper. so, the copper will react with any gold chloride. It will knock the gold atoms out replace them as copper chloride. the gold will form a black coating on the copper wich usually falls off or I lightly scrub it off with a tooth brush and it will collect in the bottom of the beaker.
You should study here on the forum how to recover and wash the powder for safe keeping untill you learn how to refine it.
In an earlier post on this thread you were told about using iron in the solution.
After you are sure any gold has been cemented and removed from the solution then in order to make the solution safe for disposal, you are doing a cementing operation agian, only this time you are using the iron to remove any copper/other base metals from the solution. Collect those metals in the same way.
Before you and your friend begin this download Hoke's book. Read it and our posts and tutorials untill you have a very good understanding of what you are doing and why.
Hope this helps!

artart47
 
I cannot add any advice to what has already been given. I will give a little commentary on what is known on this forum as "Hoke's book", or "Hoke". "Refining Precious Metal Wastes", by C M Hoke was published many decades ago as a guide for jewelers and others in that industry to recover and refine jewelry wastes. Written in a manner for most to easily understand, it focuses on proper processes, which are easily adaptable to other modern precious metal wastes, rather than chemical formulas. Several acquaintance experiments are described and MUST be understood. Although some details in some of the processes described have been improved on over the decades, the basics are sound. Study of Hoke combined with study of this forum will help your friend immensely. Since you are acting as laison between your friend and this forum, you will assuredly learn much also.
 
After reading through this post several times. I am curious if your friend is not savvy or a friend to the internet. How did he get a hold of the drops or gold drop melts or whatever else they're called? Not picking or accusing. Just curiosity seeks this cat. :mrgreen:

Take care
Andrew
 
I am curious about the posts telling him to cement out the gold with a piece of copper. If the original pins contained copper, why would the gold cement out to a new piece of copper introduced into the mix? Wouldn't any gold dissolved into the solution cement out back onto the copper that is already in the ingot? \

I shuddered when I read that he had used chemicals from an unmarked container. Two or three unmarked containers is a recipe for disaster.

It also appeared that the OP had read where we won't help anyone who hasn't done the required research and has tried to circumvent the system by saying it was for a friend without Internet access. I, for one, do not want to hold someone by the hand and tell them step by step what to do. That has been done on this forum for years. For that reason alone, the answers to all of his questions are all out there if you want to spend the time and do a little work for yourself.
 
bswartzwelder said:
I am curious about the posts telling him to cement out the gold with a piece of copper. If the original pins contained copper, why would the gold cement out to a new piece of copper introduced into the mix? Wouldn't any gold dissolved into the solution cement out back onto the copper that is already in the ingot? \

I shuddered when I read that he had used chemicals from an unmarked container. Two or three unmarked containers is a recipe for disaster.

It also appeared that the OP had read where we won't help anyone who hasn't done the required research and has tried to circumvent the system by saying it was for a friend without Internet access. I, for one, do not want to hold someone by the hand and tell them step by step what to do. That has been done on this forum for years. For that reason alone, the answers to all of his questions are all out there if you want to spend the time and do a little work for yourself.
Click to expand...

Ok so a technology confounded friend of mine recently made a mistake when refining with aqua regia and asked me to seek out the answer on how to correct the mistake. At the point of the instructions that urea is added to neutralize the nitric acid is where the confusion happened.

So not having his chemicals marked, and it being his first time, he got mixed up and instead of urea he added a bunch of sodium nitrate.

What should he do now? It's about a quarter gallon half of which is the added sodium nitrate(roughly 2 pounds of granules) diluted in water. The other half of the quarter gallon is pre mixed aqua regia.

Please help this first try at home refining may lead to being his last.
Click to expand...

If you read the OP's statement the sodium nitrate was used by accident while he was attempting to neutralize the remaining nitric in the solution. My guess is that the bar had been dissolved in the solution at this point, and that is why I suggested he use copper to cement out any gold that might be there. Normaly I would have suggested he use sulfamic acid to neutralize the nitric but he has stuck a large quantity of dissolved sodium nitrate. If he uses copper the solution will eat up the copper till the HCL is used up and it will leave him with a nitric rich solution with no HCL left in the solution. The gold will still drop from this solution using copper, he could even go so far as dropping the gold with SMB in the copper rich solution if he was familiar with what he was doing.

Harold even asked the OP if he had tested the solution to see if gold was in the solution, but he probably realized after he posted that question that the posted would not get a reading from the test because of it being a heavy AR solution. Does that make him wrong for the suggestion, I don't feel it does, but he tried to help the user.

I don't consider this as holding his hand I consider this as giving a little bit of advise to get his gold out of the solution then read up on what he is doing and try again when he is better informed on what he is doing.

I don't remember it being a rule that we cannot help someone, just a suggestion and my view on that suggestion is well know by everyone I would think that reads most of the messages on the forum.
 
Barren Realms 007 said:
Harold even asked the OP if he had tested the solution to see if gold was in the solution, but he probably realized after he posted that question that the posted would not get a reading from the test because of it being a heavy AR solution. Does that make him wrong for the suggestion, I don't feel it does, but he tried to help the user.

I don't consider this as holding his hand I consider this as giving a little bit of advise to get his gold out of the solution then read up on what he is doing and try again when he is better informed on what he is doing.

I don't remember it being a rule that we cannot help someone, just a suggestion and my view on that suggestion is well know by everyone I would think that reads most of the messages on the forum.
Click to expand...

I actually laughed when I read the above post! Even amongst those who choose their words carefully, Harold stands out. There is absolutely no chance that Harold had a suggestion and then posted that suggestion, before considering whether his suggestion would be appropriate.

But really, Harold didn't make a suggestion at all. He asked a question. A question that permits himself and others to assess the original poster's base of knowledge. If you cannot answer Harold's question, you shouldn't be doing anything with this solution.

I would be careful before employing Harold's question for your purposes, there is much more behind his questions than appears on the surface.
 
Add 50% more copper by weight and melt it into anode bar and run it through a parting cell. If I had to give advice about it. Chemical separation would more than likely cost more than the metal contains.
 
AndyWilliams said:
Barren Realms 007 said:
But really, Harold didn't make a suggestion at all. He asked a question. A question that permits himself and others to assess the original poster's base of knowledge. If you cannot answer Harold's question, you shouldn't be doing anything with this solution.

I would be careful before employing Harold's question for your purposes, there is much more behind his questions than appears on the surface.
Click to expand...
Agreed 1 Million Times!


AndyWilliams said:
Add 50% more copper by weight and melt it into anode bar and run it through a parting cell. If I had to give advice about it. Chemical separation would more than likely cost more than the metal contains.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Again... Agreed 1 Million times!.

Help has been given and tips and advisement(s) have been initiated. Now, just wait to see if any thing positive came from all of this from the "op" and (or) the refiner.

The message couldn't get any clearer than this. Put everything up safely and study before doing any more refining. It's that simple.

Hope that helps!
 
Barren Realms 007 said:
Harold even asked the OP if he had tested the solution to see if gold was in the solution, but he probably realized after he posted that question that the posted would not get a reading from the test because of it being a heavy AR solution. Does that make him wrong for the suggestion, I don't feel it does, but he tried to help the user.
Click to expand...
There was method to my madness----pointing out that trying to help those who know nothing (exactly what it appears this individual knows) results in providing information that simply leads to more questions. The solution to his inquiry, of course, is for the individual to try to gain a basic understanding of refining, so these things make sense, but the world is filled with individuals who seem to think that they are exempt from the rules---that they can, indeed, purchase a piano and schedule a recital without having ever played the piano. After all, what could go wrong?

In regards to testing a solution that is overly supplied with nitrates, the test can still be valid. Don't think for a moment that I hadn't paid attention to the problem. I had. I'd still test, but I'd also understand that the reaction would be fleeting---a quick eye would be required, otherwise the flash of purple would be missed, assuming there's gold in solution, which has yet to be ascertained, at least as far as I know.

What could have easily happened in this case is for the individual to have exhausted the nitric (or HCl) before all of the solids had been dissolved. They, in turn, would have cemented the values, so precipitation would serve no purpose (that's why one should test), as the gold would not be in solution, but instead cemented and deposited in the solids found at the bottom, which, in this case, would include the excessive nitrates that would have been introduced.

Trying to help this person is a waste of time. Unless readers are willing to carry him from the first operation through the last, there will be no end to questions, and I fear the environment will pay the price of an individual who isn't willing to learn what is required to solve the mystery that confronts him, and will do the very least he can to prevent the poisonous solutions and substances from being improperly discharged. After all, if a person has little to no patience for proper learning, what in hell makes any of you think he'd be interested in doing anything that doesn't pertain to his gaining some of that "fast and easy" money from gold?

I have, for some time now, tried to promote the idea that anyone new to the board should start out by getting informed. I did that with the idea in mind that the same tired questions that have been asked time and again would come to a slow stop, perhaps eliminating the clutter from the board, but that has proven to be not so effective, as "privileged" individuals seem to think the rules don't apply to them, especially when their case is "special".

I have wasted way too much of my time addressing these issues. It's coming to an end.

Harold
 
To reply to the repeating question,

Yes he got them off ebay(my 9year old can work ebay and YouTube) so that doesn't take much savy. Also much was purchased by his 23 year old daughter and son in law. Most of his info has been watching YouTube as reading is hard for him. I am really looking to help a buddy the repeated insinuations that it's me are wearing a little bit.

I will go read Hokes book if that's what needs to be done. I see a lot of good info being offered here I will get some pictures in the next day or so. Tomorrow is my son's birthday party so it might be a day or more but I'll get it done. Thanks for the helpful advice and I have some follow up questions but I think I'll ask them through private messages to the helpful commentors so no one feels like I'm needing to be hand held through a first lesson through twelfth lesson, or nobody feels like I'm trying to circumvent any rules. I apologize to any that may have felt that way.
 
Bert you seem to missing the point here.
The material is very likely rubbish with very little gold and will be an enormous amount of work to get what little is there, the cost of chemicals to simply recover let alone refine will outweigh the value then you have to refine it and then safely dispose of the solution all costing more money and time.
My honest opinion is to get your friend to relist it all on eBay and cut his losses, I know your trying to help your friend here but a reality check is needed he might not like it but it could save him even more of his hard earned money, unfortunately he and his daughter aren't the only ones to get caught by this material!
 
If you really want to help your friend, you are the first one that needs to understand that he started with the wrong material to start with. nickvc said well, resell it as is, accept a tiny loss with a chance to earn a buk and close this chapter, painlessly and quickly.

If you or your friend is likely to happen to like refining, then reading is a must. There is no other way around if you want to get it right and yours and your friend's first chapter is a clear example of what happen otherwise.

Marco
 
500g of prime ebay gold drops will yield about 2 grams of gold in case there is any gold at all in them. Perhaps if your friend is lucky he may have about 5 grams there but that would be something what rarely seen with this type of fools gold.
 
bert_b said:
To reply to the repeating question,

Yes he got them off ebay(my 9year old can work ebay and YouTube) so that doesn't take much savy. Also much was purchased by his 23 year old daughter and son in law. Most of his info has been watching YouTube as reading is hard for him. I am really looking to help a buddy the repeated insinuations that it's me are wearing a little bit.

I will go read Hokes book if that's what needs to be done. I see a lot of good info being offered here I will get some pictures in the next day or so. Tomorrow is my son's birthday party so it might be a day or more but I'll get it done. Thanks for the helpful advice and I have some follow up questions but I think I'll ask them through private messages to the helpful commentors so no one feels like I'm needing to be hand held through a first lesson through twelfth lesson, or nobody feels like I'm trying to circumvent any rules. I apologize to any that may have felt that way.
Click to expand...

Bert,

Every second that you spend on this project, he loses money and you lose time. Every second. Even for learning, this project is not worthwhile. You are working with the wrong material.

For all intents and purposes, you are not only being handfed, you are asking to be handfed, no matter whether it is in front of everyone or in private. If it weren't so, you would read through this forum, all the answers are already there. And I would argue that those "helpful" commentators are really not so helpful. They seem helpful because they give you what you think you need. You spend nothing to get the information, not even your time. And you can't know if their information is helpful because you have no way to measure their advice.

Whether it is a buddy or not, you are the one asking the questions, you are the one who is wasting your time, you are the one looking to be handfed through the processes. The two of you could better spend your time by reading the book. You could be halfway through it by now. You'll find it an extremely easy read; it's written for the layman. My problem, to this point, is that you have shown no respect to this board. The moderators on this board are highly knowledgeable, and their knowledge and experience have formed the basis for many others on this board to do the same thing to which you aspire.

The larger flaw in your thinking is that because your friend couldn't get the free knowledge he needs from youtube (and I'm sure he looked there for the answer to his problem), that the solution was to find another avenue for free knowledge. Coming here to learn, and to invest time in your education, is what is usually best received. It is considered selfish, and I'm in this camp, to expect others to write the answer just for you, though the answer has already been written, before, many times.
 
My wife who does not even know where the dip stick for checking the oil is in an engine.

She bought an old broken down car, the previous owner said transmission slips and will not go into gear, she does not know if it is an automatic or standard transmission, none of the electrical works, the battery is new, and some of the wiring harnesses are burnt up, the engine is frozen.

She paid a lot of money for this car, and wishes to learn to fix it, to be able to drive it tomorrow, she needs the vehicle to get to work 30 miles one way, 60miles a day.

She has no mechanical skills, or skill in troubleshooting or repairing electrical problems.
But she can follow instructions, and is a fast learner if you can provide the information with pictures, as she is a hands on learner, and needs to see the process being done, so if you can walk her through the process she may be able to do it.

If you can help me by telling me how to fix her car, I can relay the info, so she could learn to get the job done as soon as possible, she does not have time to go to school to learn these skills, and does not have the money or desire to send the car to a mechanic.

Can you please help me to tell her how to fix her car and keep it running.
She really needs a dependable vehicle NOW.

Surely you can give me the instructions I need. so she can fix this small problem.

Epic failure!!! What do I do now???

Just need a little help, can you tell me how she can fix this problem, and learn to keep the car running with any more problems that will come along with this vehicle in the future?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top