Has anyone ever dissolved gold leaf and came up with a dark green solution and a large amount of salt?i processed these foils in one half cup of hcl and one and a half ounces of bleach. The guy who let me refine them owns a gold buying store and he paid the customer at 18kt percentage so I'd like to get the guy some if not all his $ back,but I have a funny feeling about the green acid. Any info would be extremely helpful!
green auric chloride from 3.5 dwt of gold leaf
- Thread starter chrisp
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Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
Have you tested your solution for gold?
It's the dark green solution that concerns me. It sounds like it could have been faux gold leaf, which is a copper alloy. If the original leaf was real and had the color of rich gold, indicating a high karat, there shouldn't be enough copper in it to turn it more than light blue-green. Real leaf with a rich gold color will usually be at least 22K. Faux gold looks very much like real gold, especially to the untrained observer.
Real gold leaf is very thin. it would take about 400-500 sheets of standard 3.375" x 3.375" gold leaf to weigh 3.5 dwt. The faux leaf is a lot thicker and it would take a lot fewer sheets. Also, the faux sheets are typically about 5 to 5.5" square.
Was paper in between the sheets and, if so, was that part of the weight? If paper was there and, if the gold was real, I would guess that the paper would weigh about 10 times more than the gold leaf.
When you're dealing with an unknown and have a responsibility to a customer, it's never a good idea to process everything without doing a small sample first. If this turns out to be faux gold (very common, especially on Ebay), it might be difficult to make the gold buyer believe you're not lying to him.
The salt could be copper(I) chloride.
As Barren Realms suggested, the very first thing to do is test the solution for gold, using stannous chloride.
Real gold leaf is very thin. it would take about 400-500 sheets of standard 3.375" x 3.375" gold leaf to weigh 3.5 dwt. The faux leaf is a lot thicker and it would take a lot fewer sheets. Also, the faux sheets are typically about 5 to 5.5" square.
Was paper in between the sheets and, if so, was that part of the weight? If paper was there and, if the gold was real, I would guess that the paper would weigh about 10 times more than the gold leaf.
When you're dealing with an unknown and have a responsibility to a customer, it's never a good idea to process everything without doing a small sample first. If this turns out to be faux gold (very common, especially on Ebay), it might be difficult to make the gold buyer believe you're not lying to him.
The salt could be copper(I) chloride.
As Barren Realms suggested, the very first thing to do is test the solution for gold, using stannous chloride.
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
goldsilverpro said:
That was the reason I suggested it.
