Got gold flakes and a graphite crucible and a mapp torch

[poppedup]

Hello there guys i got into recovering gold from scrap a couple months ago. i got the foils from about 2lb's of chip fingers. so i got some 2 1/2 tbsps of foil mixed with a 5-10% amount of green silicon debris too tiny to remove with tweezers.
i chose not to refine the foils with AR because nitric is expensive and i cant do it with the clorox method because i dont have anywhere to heat it up. is this too big a deal? i ran the foils through A/P three times to make sure the great majority of metals that arent gold have been dissolved away.(3 weeks in the hot florida sun dissolving)
i got a graphite crucible after much struggle and decided to try to melt copper in it before i do my batch of gold.
However no matter what i do, i cant even melt the copper it gets orange at best, i tried putting it in pile of hot charcoal and then putting the map torch to it. then i put it on my stove top with the flame on full blast and the torch on it as well to no result.
The copper remains solid... i dont want to risk it with the gold even if the melting temp is just like 30 degrees lower, so this will be my control experiment.
does anyone know any method of getting a crucible hot enough with a mapp torch.
Also would like to include a while ago i boiled HCL to dissolve half an ounce of kovar pins but after 4+ hours of boiling only half of them dissolved anyway to speed that up?
sorry for limiting myself to such little resources but im as poor as it gets lmao. looking forward to learning thanks.

 

[solar_plasma]

Poppedup,

HCl/chlorox isn't used while hot. Heating would drive off any dissolved chlorine at normal pressure. Actually it works fine in the cold with gold foils or powders.

Though melting pure gold is somewhat easier than to melt copper, this is not correct for impure gold. With this contaminated crucible and your unrefined foils, I am pretty sure you will end up with some ugly black and golden button - just like my first one before I did find this forum :lol:

Kovar is annoying. The only fast one I want to mention here is straight AR. Often it might be better just to wait longer if time doesn't matter.

You seem to have learned a lot, - but also a lot from other sources in the net. I advise to download and read Hoke, further to give it some hundred hours just reading this forum before you go on. Could save you a lot beginner's mistakes.

 

[solar_plasma]

Best start:

The Library

 

[poppedup]

Poppedup,



Though melting pure gold is somewhat easier than to melt copper, this is not correct for impure gold. With this contaminated crucible and your unrefined foils, I am pretty sure you will end up with some ugly black and golden button - just like my first one before I did find this forum :lol:

thanks alot for responding ill get to studying in a bit but what do you mean by contaminated crucible? i only heated it up with mapp and the copper didnt get to melt at most it has a little charcoal dust from the coal but i had a lid on it.
once again thanks.

 

[solar_plasma]

The crucible or better melting dish you use for melting pure gold has not to be used for anything else but pure gold (ideally just like any other labware, when it comes to refining). Once you have had copper powders in it, it is contaminated and surely it will contaminate your gold unless (maybe even if) your an expert in fluxing.

 

[heliman4141]

Hello there guys i got into recovering gold from scrap a couple months ago. i got the foils from about 2lb's of chip fingers. so i got some 2 1/2 tbsps of foil mixed with a 5-10% amount of green silicon debris too tiny to remove with tweezers.
i chose not to refine the foils with AR because nitric is expensive and i cant do it with the clorox method because i dont have anywhere to heat it up. is this too big a deal? i ran the foils through A/P three times to make sure the great majority of metals that arent gold have been dissolved away.(3 weeks in the hot florida sun dissolving)
i got a graphite crucible after much struggle and decided to try to melt copper in it before i do my batch of gold.
However no matter what i do, i cant even melt the copper it gets orange at best, i tried putting it in pile of hot charcoal and then putting the map torch to it. then i put it on my stove top with the flame on full blast and the torch on it as well to no result.
The copper remains solid... i dont want to risk it with the gold even if the melting temp is just like 30 degrees lower, so this will be my control experiment.
does anyone know any method of getting a crucible hot enough with a mapp torch.
Also would like to include a while ago i boiled HCL to dissolve half an ounce of kovar pins but after 4+ hours of boiling only half of them dissolved anyway to speed that up?
sorry for limiting myself to such little resources but im as poor as it gets lmao. looking forward to learning thanks.

You were so close then you blew it & made several bad decisions the first being you were at the stage where you should have placed the foils in a beaker & added hcl, just enough to cover them & did a swirling rinse at least 3 times & then carefully pour off the hcl & add fresh hcl again, this wash would have helped remove remaining base metals.
Next you should have then added hcl again just covering then add bleach is small amounts with a watch glass over the beaker & watching & stirring until all the foils had dissolved. Then you should have added some sulphuric acid to drop any lead/tin in the dissolved mix. Next you should then have filtered it into another beaker, multiple times if necessary until it was a clear golden solution.
Now it would have been ready to be dropped with smb after adding a bit of distilled water first. This would then sit overnight to allow all gold to settle, decant into waste pot & do the usual washes necessary to prepare for melting.
Your last HUGE big no-no is using a graphite crucible, never try that again, use a regular crucible seasoned first and you will have no melting issues. Graphite has to be pre-heated in a furnace to the same temp as the metal to be effective as it wont hold heat like a regular crucible will. Trying to pour into an icecube would be about as easy to do as graphite is.

My advice is buy a regular crucible it will probably come with the borax if purchased online & take your ugly button & hammer it till its paper thin then try to liquify it using hcl & bleach & follow the instructions I just gave you. As far as the Kovor pins? Well..............stop boiling your just using up energy. Put them in a mix of 90% hcl & 10% peroxide H2O2 and add a bubbler if you have one & allow the pins to dissolve. Once dissolved proceed with recovery & refining. Remember you ending up with waste to deal with so read the section about dealing with neutralizing waste before disposing of.

Dave

 

[galenrog]

To expand just a bit on one of the items mentioned by solar_plasma. "Refining Precious Metal Wastes" by C M Hoke, or "Hoke" as it is referred to on this forum, was originally published in 1940. Written primarily for the independent jeweler, many of the techniques are fully applicable to the electronic wastes many of us deal with today. I urge you to read, read again, read again while taking notes, then perform the acquaintance experiments while taking notes and asking questions. Following this track, with study of the forum library, should help you on your way.

Also, leave YouTube alone, except individual videos suggested by longtime members. Far too many videos are made by folks who have not yet moved up to amateur status.

If you have any further problems or questions, ask away. Successes, even small ones, are also welcome.

 

[Smack]

Once you melt one type of metal in a crucible that crucible is now married to that type of metal, melting a different type of metal like gold in a crucible married to silver can contaminate the gold.

 

[poppedup]

You were so close then you blew it & made several bad decisions the first being you were at the stage where you should have placed the foils in a beaker & added hcl, just enough to cover them & did a swirling rinse at least 3 times & then carefully pour off the hcl & add fresh hcl again, this wash would have helped remove remaining base metals.
Next you should have then added hcl again just covering then add bleach is small amounts with a watch glass over the beaker & watching & stirring until all the foils had dissolved. Then you should have added some sulphuric acid to drop any lead/tin in the dissolved mix. Next you should then have filtered it into another beaker, multiple times if necessary until it was a clear golden solution.
Now it would have been ready to be dropped with smb after adding a bit of distilled water first. This would then sit overnight to allow all gold to settle, decant into waste pot & do the usual washes necessary to prepare for melting.
Your last HUGE big no-no is using a graphite crucible, never try that again, use a regular crucible seasoned first and you will have no melting issues. Graphite has to be pre-heated in a furnace to the same temp as the metal to be effective as it wont hold heat like a regular crucible will. Trying to pour into an icecube would be about as easy to do as graphite is.

My advice is buy a regular crucible it will probably come with the borax if purchased online & take your ugly button & hammer it till its paper thin then try to liquify it using hcl & bleach & follow the instructions I just gave you. As far as the Kovor pins? Well..............stop boiling your just using up energy. Put them in a mix of 90% hcl & 10% peroxide H2O2 and add a bubbler if you have one & allow the pins to dissolve. Once dissolved proceed with recovery & refining. Remember you ending up with waste to deal with so read the section about dealing with neutralizing waste before disposing of.

Dave

Thanks man, i took your advice and just did the clorox HCL method without heat and it worked almost instantly dissolved the 4 grams of foils in 20 minutes completely leaving only the silicon and ceramic scrap. That really helped i just filtered it through a coffee filter and put it in a porous lidded jar That i assume is the chloro auric acid, How long would someone normally wait before adding the SMB ? do i need to wait for any remaining chlorine to evaporate away or can i just do it?
once again thanks.
o yeah also is there anything that prevents kovar from dissolving? man i refreshed the entire solution with 2:1 ratio of hcl and peroxide but the solutioned turned dark green almost instantly but its been there a couple hours with no materialy having been dissolved? (yeah i assume thats copper and nickle chloride but wouldnt that displace iron chloride vice versa and saturate the solution much quicker? thus preventing any more material from dissolving. Mind you i had them in acid peroxide over two weeks and the gold plated copper wires and kovar pins could care less they just took a nice refreshing dip in water as far as its concerned)

 

[heliman4141]

If you leave the chlorine/hcl open to vent away the bleach a day outta do it. Covering it with plastic door screen & a rubberband will keep out bugs and dust & let it breath. If possible place it in direct sunlight too. Remember to then add sulphuric acid right away to remove any tin,lead that may be in solution and allow that to sit as well after a good stir. Do the smb drop in a squeaky clean beaker that you do the final filtering into. Several coffee filters stacked outta do nicely in a large funnel. I use a 2-pc plastic butchner funnel that is the exact dia. of a coffee filter & usually place 4 filters stacked & filter 3 times back & fourth between 2 beakers.I spray the filters with distilled water till clear then replace them & re-filter again only IF its still a tad cloudy, usually its clear first time tho.

Pins are a bear period.................especially if they are not copper. Most guys use a sulpheric cell on them, my personal way is nitric & distilled water, its fast & gets the job done in an hr. or so.
Issue with that is its not really worth it unless you have a lot of pins. & it makes waste to have to treat. Price of nitric verses amount of pins is the main issue. I have a gallon sitting around so its not an issue but if you don't have access to any then your stuck the slow method of AP, that can take a very long time bud.

As the others mentioned read Hokes then read every single post you can on every process your involved in or contemplating until its in your head so well you could give a speech about it to anyone, then you can safely do this knowing the outcome of every process from start to finish & what safety measures you need to do along the way.

The pins are your only pita, there is so little gold on them its almost pointless to continue adding anything but a bubbler to help the reaction at this point, the added air really makes a difference its really the only option you have with the chemicals your using.

This is a time consuming hobby so just read, read, & read while things are slowly dissolving. Mapp will melt Gold in a proper crucible that is seasoned. Look up Lazer Steves video about seasoning a crucible he has a super site look at everything you can that he offers. Best vids around IMHO.

Dave