Gold Silver Copper Mixture

[MATMAD]

Hey everyone-

.......Yup another NOOB!
I have successfully performed aqua regia and ran into some issues in the melting process. It turns out I did not flux my crucible well, and the gold never made it out of the crucible in my drop in melting furnace. So when I melted a silver copper alloy down a few days later, it ended up mixing with the gold stuck in the crucible, and now i have gold silver and copper all mixed together in a a pile of shot i made with it and a small 1oz round I made with majority of the mixture. I heated the furnace to about 975 Celsius and then poured the mixture in an ingot, the excess was poured as shot...I also have some while coating on the metals, I'm guessing I used too much flux...?

So my question is where to go from here.. I would like to separate the three metals out and pour each individually into bars or rounds. If I was to guess my next step would be to put the metals back into AR mixture and first remove the gold with SMB..and melt the mud down after some washes in a NEW crucible. (BTW any insight in the best fluxing techniques would be appreciated...) After the gold is out, I was thinking to add copper pipe to AR (minus gold) and let the silver fall to the bottom, wash and melt in crucible just for silver. AND last the copper, I really have no clue what is going on with this.. I believe the copper burnt off in the gas emitted from AR?? I could be way off, not sure, but I'm excited to find out!! Please see attached photo. I BELIEVE there is 1oz of silver, around 5 grams of gold, and very little copper.....

 

[Smack]

You have some reading to do. You don't separate metals in A/R, you use Nitric or the A/P process for that. You need to deal with the base metals first, more over you need to take the guided tour and read Hoke's book to learn how to address the base metals. Set what you have aside and begin on your path to knowledge by reading and taking notes from this forum. Good luck and be safe because breathing the fumes can kill you.

 

[MATMAD]

Thanks for the reply, I have a few books about the chemistry of gold, I have a come to have reasonable understanding for base metals, and am beginning to understand more about the methods and what they entail and what the different processes do. This is a hobby for me and I am hoping I learn more in the coming days, I am much more of a hands on learner and can accept mistakes as long as I can solve the issues. And please note, safety is priority, I have purchased a small stock of all necessary items including acid vapor respirators even thou the acid digestion is done outdoors, eye and face protection, disposable body suits, proper gloves, etc. I also purchased a small acid spill kit from a local chemical supply house...THANK YOUR FOR ALL CONCERNS!

I am now confident what I have here is a mostly silver, some gold, and a little bit of copper mixture, possibly with another base metal such as tin or iron(could have came from tap water. I came to this conclusion because I decided to put what I thought was gold silver and copper in coca cola for about 30 mins. The attached Image was the result after some light brushing and polishing it seems that the gold turned silver and and other base metals have began to brown up (thinking its the beginning of rust...). The silver is bright and shiny, and the copper is now apparent as well in almost copper alloy (bronze-ish) form. I broke some of the metals up as compared to the previous posted image.

Check out these three images, it compares my new photos after coca cola soaking to the photo above in the topic..

AGAIN, any help is appreciated!

Best Regards-

Matt

 

[MATMAD]

ABOUT MY LAST POST...I forgot to mention that when I did this cleaning and buffing, I had presoaked the metals in Coca Cola...Please read throu the 3 images I posted...My question is WHERE DID THE GOLD GO!!?? Shot in the dark, after some research, I believe MAYBE because of the overwhelming quantities of silver to gold on certain pieces, the silver overtakes the golds color...? I am very uncertain....but I will be back to work in the AM, hopefully I got some good responses by then LOL! PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT EVERYONE THINKS!!

AGAIN Best regards---
Matt

 

[Geo]

i may be missing a point here, but, what is the coca-cola suppose to do for the metal?

 

[Geo]

oh yea, if you have a source for nitric acid, you will need some. a good soak in some warm dilute, nitric acid/water, 50/50 will remove the silver and copper from the gold, then cement the silver out of solution with a piece of copper.

 

[MATMAD]

i may be missing a point here, but, what is the coca-cola suppose to do for the metal?

LMFAO!! I came home from my warehouse I work on this stuff at, it's kinda like a fun factory of crazy stuff...anyways, I got home and brought the metals with me, and my wife was like lets try to shine it and clean it up so we can see it better!! BUT I had nothing to shine it with so we tired Coke (old penny trick) and we tried some tooth paste, both did a pretty crappy job cleaning! Didn't think past the point that this was molten metal a few hours prior and probably was not dirtyf...! Anyways THANK YOU for the insight, I will stop by the supply shop and get some Nitric Acid...seems this should be relatively simple...

Ill keep you posted tomorrow if you are interested to see what happened...

Best Regards-
Matt