GP/GF Watches gold content

[butcher]

As far as I understand they do not plate gold directly to many metals, or materials like glass or dried flowers...
Normally a base layer of nickel (or other strike plating or substance) will be plated onto the metal then gold plated on top of that. I believe they call the base metal plating a strike plating.

 

[shruli]

Thank you very much thats all really helpful
I havnt heared from the curing salt method. I will keep that in mind. Isnt it a problem that there is also sodium chloride(salt) in the curing salt? Can I use my stockpot with nitrates and chlorides? Until now I have just used and put HCl / Peroxide / Bleach in my stockpot. How does it affect my stock pot when I use nitrates and chlorides?

Edit: How much concentration does the curing salt has to have? (potassium nitrate)
I could get my hands on 15% potassium nitrate solution 85% distilled water. I would assume that would work too?

David

99.9% pure potassium nitrate, saltpetre powder, which I get from Amazon, poor mans AR is a common method used where nitric acid is difficult to obtain. Sorry I don't know about its reaction with anything other than HCL.

 

[GoldUser]

As far as I understand they do not plate gold directly to many metals, or materials like glass or dried flowers...
Normally a base layer of nickel (or other strike plating or substance) will be plated onto the metal then gold plated on top of that. I believe they call the base metal plating a strike plating.

Acid/Peroxide should remove all of the metal below the plating is that assumption right?

 

[GoldUser]

As far as I understand they do not plate gold directly to many metals, or materials like glass or dried flowers...
Normally a base layer of nickel (or other strike plating or substance) will be plated onto the metal then gold plated on top of that. I believe they call the base metal plating a strike plating.

Some of the watches are from the 60s 70s could there be some hazardous compounds like mentioned in hokes book?

 

[butcher]

I am unsure of what harmful compounds you are referring to, I cannot think of anything that would be in a watch that I would have had as a young man that would be more dangerous or hazardous than a watch I could get today.

Hoke's Book when she wrote it was some time before the 1960s, I believe she originally published her book in 1938, back when they put more gold into what they made, I cannot think of anything that would be more dangerous in a watch of her day.

Many metals that may be in a watch or in almost anything else, once put into a solution, dissolved, or made into a gas or a compound can become a poison, a hazardous substance, or an irritant independent of when it was made.

Cupric chloride (what you are calling acid/peroxide) can be used, it would be slow, and you could attack base metals without attacking gold (depending on how you use or run the leaching process).

Ferric chloride hot and concentrated will work similarly but also much faster and more aggressive.

H2SO4 and a nitrate salt (poor-mans nitric) which attacks base metals and not gold is also an option.

Or depending on your use of the oxidizing agent and its use could be used similar to what Shruti has been suggesting where the leach attacks all metals and he recovers gold from the leach with a poor-mans aqua regia based type leaching process using HCl and a nitrate salt.

There are several ways you could attack the problem and come to similar results, understanding the problem and the basic principles and reactions may be more important to a successful outcome than how you attack it.