Finishing

[DOWNBEE94]

So I've gone thru the a.p process with my gold fingers. And I've started to melt in a cast iron little tea cup candle holder. The first melt I used only borax and thought I got all of the air pockets but once I cooled it broke into a bunch of littler more copper looking pieces but I had not even had copper in it so I was confused. Then I found some tan looking flux and tried melting once again didn't have borax. Got it to red hot but not to where it looks like gold as fires hitting it and ran out of fuel. So I dropped it in cold water but it didn't unstick I wantto try remelting now I have borax and flux and a better tourch head but I can't get it unstuck from the cast iron to prehead it before I start . And it still looks extra red.??

 

[anachronism]

Pictures would help.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

So I've gone thru the a.p process with my gold fingers. And I've started to melt in a cast iron little tea cup candle holder.

Gold will alloy with iron, so if you get it hot enough you'll have a whole new problem.

The first melt I used only borax and thought I got all of the air pockets but once I cooled it broke into a bunch of littler more copper looking pieces but I had not even had copper in it so I was confused.

Releasing the gold foils from fingers is only part of the process. There will probably still be nickel and perhaps some copper on the foils. That is the point when you want to dissolve the gold foils and selectively precipitate relatively pure gold.

Got it to red hot but not to where it looks like gold as fires hitting it and ran out of fuel.

Red hot is not hot enough. See Furnace Temperature Colors

Dave

 

[DOWNBEE94]

Dave, thank you for answering me quickly. I'm just now seeing it. I clicked on the link you had at the end but nothing on link

 

[jarlowski1]

Downbee Dave was showing you that you didnt get the foils hot enough to melt. Gold melts at 1948 Degrees Farenheit. You most likely have a mixture of gold, copper, nickel and possibly a little iron. I would suggest that you put the foils into a container and save them until you are properly equipped to deal with them. You first need to understand that there are 3 main stages in refining gold. The first is recovery. Recovery is where you separate the gold from the object that it is attached to whether it be a circuit board or a piece of jewelry. You have completed stage 1. You have collected gold foils from pcb boards. You can technically melt this into a bead but I and many of our members here would advise you to complete stage 2 for a much much cleaner piece of gold. Stage 2 is refining the gold (separating it from other metals) the gold is not pure in its current state. Stage 2 is where you dissolve the gold into a solution and then precipitating the gold out of the solution. This chemically separates the gold. After that you wash the gold powder(it will be brown/red to black when dirty) it will turn light tan when it is really clean. I would reccomend to dissolve it again after the first refinement and wash it once again (following the wash procedures outlined in this forum). After that then you can move on to stage 3 which is to melt the gold. I would suggest you buy a proper melting dish.