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Ellis1013

Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2022
Messages
6
Location
Miami
I am about to start my first melt and I was wondering if I can leave my PM to cool off with the slag and then simply break the crucible and slag to reveal a PM button? Would this hypothetically work?
 
Pure gold do not need Borax or other slag forming elements.
PGMs have so high temperature that you can not use Borax.
So what kind of PMs?
 
In this case it would be sterling silver to 999 and 10k gold to 999.
It is not feasible, what are you going to use the alloy for?
You have no idea whats inside the 10k, so if you melt these two together it might be very brittle.
 
It is not feasible, what are you going to use the alloy for?
You have no idea whats inside the 10k, so if you melt these two together it might be very brittle
So maybe I will have to cupel them first. Anyways, after cupelling, do you think the method I referred to would work?
 
I want to make sure we understand what you're trying to do. Are you trying to purify sterling silver to 999 silver, and also trying to purify 10K gold to 999 gold by heat and fluxes?

Dave
 
Refining of gold is usually done with chemistry. First and foremost because it’s hard to get out the base metals in a smelt. You have to have a correct flux mix and then probably blow air or oxygen through the molten metal for some time to get proper oxidation of the base metals. It’s doable if you have many tons of metal to process, but small scale, not so much.
Take some of your Silver and alloy it with the Gold to 6karat and pour it into a metal bucket with cold water in a thin stream. Now you will have small flakes/prills of 6karat Gold.
The Silver can be dissolved in Nitric and the remaining Gold in AR.
Now you can drop it with SMB or similar.
But read and study on the forum first.
The silver can be reclaimed in many ways.

Edited due to bad syntax
 
Last edited:
Why would you want to waste supplies in this matter?
You doing this smelting just for your self?
Crucibles can be used for more than one melt, but the flux mix you use will destroy them in time, and a Cupel can be used until the collection metal amount you used is to the absorption point.
On the other end you may need more than one Cupel to finish a large bead.
The Cupel is sized by the amount that it can absorb(I.E. 30 grams), one can tell by looks or added weight when this maximum absorption point is reached.
Just get a graphite cone mold off EBay to pour your molten smelt into, then when it cools down in there you have your bead at the tip.
If you can weld, you can make a 4 sided cone mold easy, good tip is to make it way larger than you think you need.
You dump the cooled mass of slag out of the cone mold and the break the button from the tip of the slag cone.
The point of using this cone (not a pun)is to collect the metal button via. gravity.
A Cupel would then be used to clean this button down further in the furnace by drawing the collector metal used in the smelt (I.E. lead) from the bead you got and just leave the PMs.
Your final bead is still a alloy of all the metals that were left in the Cupel.
 
Why would you want to waste supplies in this matter?
You doing this smelting just for your self?
Crucibles can be used for more than one melt, but the flux mix you use will destroy them in time, and a Cupel can be used until the collection metal amount you used is to the absorption point.
On the other end you may need more than one Cupel to finish a large bead.
The Cupel is sized by the amount that it can absorb(I.E. 30 grams), one can tell by looks or added weight when this maximum absorption point is reached.
Just get a graphite cone mold off EBay to pour your molten smelt into, then when it cools down in there you have your bead at the tip.
If you can weld, you can make a 4 sided cone mold easy, good tip is to make it way larger than you think you need.
You dump the cooled mass of slag out of the cone mold and the break the button from the tip of the slag cone.
The point of using this cone (not a pun)is to collect the metal button via. gravity.
A Cupel would then be used to clean this button down further in the furnace by drawing the collector metal used in the smelt (I.E. lead) from the bead you got and just leave the PMs.
Your final bead is still a alloy of all the metals that were left in the Cupel.
I knew if I read enough on this forum I would find the simple recovery solution I was looking for. Thank you and gravity works. Totally different project but I believe the four sided cone will get me in right direction
 
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