Ive just had 130kgs of silver plated and 70kgs of gold plated chains dumped on me to process for their values.Im told the silver is 1 micron and the gold 1/4 micron of 18carat plate :roll: to make it more fun they have an electroflouritic coating ie an acylic resin electro plated onto them,this i think ive found a stripper for the question is which way to process them? Im tempted to cyanide strip the gold but not sure the silver is worth the effort any comments and suggestions welcomed.
Gold and Silver plated chain.
- Thread starter nickvc
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Lots of work for a little gold. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have that electrophoretic clear coat. Stripping that may eat up all the profits and it may be more difficult than you think to remove it all. Figure about $0.08 per square inch of gold plated area. Not much. If the chains are heavy, there's probably not enough total gold to warrant doing it. If they are very thin, it may be worthwhile. I would sure want to know the assay in $/pound (or, whatever) before I tackled the job. The silver would be about $0.003/square inch - definitely not worth doing the silver.
Assuming you can get every trace of the clear coat off first, cyanide stripping by tumbling would be the only way to go. To get it all, you could do this in a small, leak-proof, cement mixer, using sodium cyanide and peroxide. I certainly wouldn't use a commercial cyanide stripper - they're much more expensive and it's often hard to get all the gold back out of them. Any method that dissolved the base metals would be a financial disaster. The sulfuric stripper would be slow and wouldn't get all the gold unless you had a tumbler.
Unless: (1) You can get the clear coat completely off, cheap; (2) You are capable of using cyanide and have a tumbler; (3) Your share is at least 50-60%, or more, of the gold, I would turn the deal down.
Assuming you can get every trace of the clear coat off first, cyanide stripping by tumbling would be the only way to go. To get it all, you could do this in a small, leak-proof, cement mixer, using sodium cyanide and peroxide. I certainly wouldn't use a commercial cyanide stripper - they're much more expensive and it's often hard to get all the gold back out of them. Any method that dissolved the base metals would be a financial disaster. The sulfuric stripper would be slow and wouldn't get all the gold unless you had a tumbler.
Unless: (1) You can get the clear coat completely off, cheap; (2) You are capable of using cyanide and have a tumbler; (3) Your share is at least 50-60%, or more, of the gold, I would turn the deal down.
Thanks for the replies i was fairly certain that cyanide was the way to go on the gold and ive been assured that the stripper will take off the acrylic coating so that might be a possibility,the value of the substrate is probably worth more than the silver,its brass so im told so the scrap merchants might be having that lot as is.If this stripper for the acrylic works i,ll try to get the breakdown and post it.
Still waiting for the acrylic stripper to arrive but wondered if the gold chain would work in a sulphuric cell? The one piece of good news is that the brass is 70/30 cu zn which is worth around $4.50 a kilo over here. Just to get my mind to over work i have also been asked to remove a load of diamonds from titanium,any ideas on how or what will dissolve it?
Quick update on this material,i took a representative sample as well as i could and melted and assayed it which gave me 0.4% Au and 0.9% Ag, and then got terms for refining the lot,went very cold on the idea of using the acrylic stripper when i found out it contained HYDROFLOURIC :evil: Not many chemicals worry me but that does 
Think i nailed a decent deal with payment for the base metals and the Au and Ag and no hydro to worry about :lol: the final deal will be around 75% of the values which to me seems fair as i have no costs or work.
Think i nailed a decent deal with payment for the base metals and the Au and Ag and no hydro to worry about :lol: the final deal will be around 75% of the values which to me seems fair as i have no costs or work.
Quick update on this material,i took a representative sample as well as i could and melted and assayed it which gave me 0.4% Au and 0.9% Ag, and then got terms for refining the lot,went very cold on the idea of using the acrylic stripper when i found out it contained HYDROFLOURIC :evil: Not many chemicals worry me but that does
Wow! The gold assay came out at $65/pound. I assume the decimal point is in the right place. Shows what little I know. I guess I have become the eternal pessimist as far as values are concerned.
I know i was shocked but that was the assay report, they dont normally make mistakes, and to ensure a good assay i used new pots to do the melts in and drilled the bar top and bottom back and front as even a small trace from a previous melt would have made a big difference.goldsilverpro said:Quick update on this material,i took a representative sample as well as i could and melted and assayed it which gave me 0.4% Au and 0.9% Ag, and then got terms for refining the lot,went very cold on the idea of using the acrylic stripper when i found out it contained HYDROFLOURIC :evil: Not many chemicals worry me but that does
Wow! The gold assay came out at $65/pound. I assume the decimal point is in the right place. Shows what little I know. I guess I have become the eternal pessimist as far as values are concerned.
GSP said:
I'm right there with you Chris!
It seems that when you give someone a ball park yield estimate of 0.25 to 3 grams per pound they figure everything based upon the 3 gram estimate.
I'm exactly the opposite, I base all my calculations off of the low end.
Steve
Im with both of you, i never get that excited about claims of yields until the results are proved,the best plated material i ever treated was claimed to be 8% AU! i nearly fell over when it actually was.lazersteve said:
