Mark henary,
First let me welcome you to the forum.
Recovery and refining is not difficult, but it can be a challenge to learn in the beginning. You are not going to learn it by watching videos, or by reading a few articles. it will take a lot of research on your part, and it will take time to get started.
Hoke's book is recommended because it is written for the non-chemist, and is an excellent book, reading it until you understand the concepts, and doing the getting acquainted experiments will be one of your best options, the book will not discuss recovery from electronic scrap, or ore, but it will give the many of the principles, and important issues we deal with in these areas.
The forum is a vast library of information, it is a bit hard to weed through the talk of the forum, but the information is there.
Some places to get started are:
General chat section: General reaction list, Guide to the forum, Welcome members...
Safety section: Dealing with waste, Elephant in the room, This section is one of the most important sections to study, a few grams of recovered gold is not worth your health or your life. Or the lives of your family or neighbors.
I see you have no clue of what your doing at this point, The best advice I can give is to stop doing and start studying.
At this point you will do everything wrong, From using too much acid, to putting yourself and everyone around you in danger. Loosing your gold with no understanding of why...
You may or may not have gold in the beaker, the gold may still be with your original material (cemented back out of solution onto the base metals), you basically dissolved a bunch of trash and that is what you have now, a bunch of trash that may or may not contain your gold. You added a reagent and precipitated a mess.
keep going this way and that is all your going to learn, how to make messes, and how to try and get back out of them. Without gaining any real understanding of this complicated art or skill.
We can help you get out of this mess, and find your gold. Finishing with this mess to help you deal with it safely.
But you should not make another mess any time soon.
Learning this skill takes a lot of work, like chemistry, or other fields of professional work, it is not going to be something you will learn to do overnight. Or by reading a few hundred how to articles, or watching a few hundred videos, You will need to understand the basic principles, gain a good understanding of the processes and procedures, learn how metals and the acids and reagents react with each other chemically, safety... Along with a thousand other things, even before beginning, if your goal is to become successful, or learn this profession. You have to really be dedicated to learning it.
You will have to study to learn to process, recover, and then refine gold, or precious metals, the best way to do that at this point is to put away the chemicals, and start using the best tool you have your mind, and study to gain the understanding.
Trying the chemistry at this point is not only deadly dangerous, but will get you no where.
At this point you will do every thing wrong, make all of the mistakes a new-by makes. Repeating the same old mistakes most all of us made, when we began trying to learn this skill.
Making messes doing very dangerous things, with no understanding of the dangers involved. loosing our gold and then scratching our wooden heads, wondering what went wrong, and where all of our gold was going.
The list of things you can do wrong, or that can go wrong,are never ending.
The way to do it right is to spend your time getting an education and an understanding first, of the chemical reactions, and the fundamental principles involved. Understand the dangers, and how it is done safely. Learning how to deal with the toxic wastes, and protect yourself from deadly gases, and the many other dangers in this field of work, How to not make mistakes, or explosive reactions with the chemistry involved...
After you spend a lot of time studying (in Hokes), and the forum, it will be easier to begin learning with a more simple material at first.
Like sterling silver, karat gold, or memory fingers... Studying each step in preparation, recovery, and refining for the material of choice. The simpler materials will have less base metals and associated problems to deal with, the results will give you a better understanding of the principles you are studying, and help you understand better when you begin working with the harder materials which can create more problems in recovery, or refining.