Gold mirror striping & recovery

[rmhe1999]

Hello folks,

I have quite a few gold plated mirrors of various sizes at my disposal. The majority of these are gold on an adhesion layer (like chrome) on a glass substrate. Others are more complicated and use an adhesion layer of titanium on silicon substrates. The bottom line is, there are a lot of them. I was hoping someone could point my in the right direction (or give me some advice) as to how to strip these coatings off and reclaim some of this gold material.

I've been searching through post archives and a lot of what I'm finding seems to be related to reclamation from old circuit boards & PCUs. I'm hoping it's not as complicated to just strip a gold mirror or gold sample, process & reclaim that material.

Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions?

Again, just looking to get started and trying to get educated.

Thanks!

 

[nickvc]

Personally I'd cyanide strip them but that's not always an option for some members of the forum depending on where they are. Using an abrasive wheel and a dust collector might work but would be fairly labour intensive and it's whether there's enough gold to make it worth while.

 

[shyknee]

AR or AP, try a little piece

 

[wrecker45]

could it be peeled off with a heat gun and scrapper.

 

[Sodbuster]

For recovery, what if it were treated like any other glassware and dipped in HCL/CL. Move on to refining soon as you strip all gold from substrates.

Ray

 

[qst42know]

First confirm it is gold. To many mirrors will contain no valuable metals. Do you have stannous?