greetings! i am Fred

[duke1025]

Man's best freind! this is Duke, he is a doberman-lab and my best buddy ever. where's the ball, throw the ball, fetch the ball all day...

did someone say a gold ball??? silver ball??? ears rotating... play?

My name is Fred, i am a retired (electronic) technician with some time on my hands and a big box of old circuit boards in my garage wondering what i can do with it. so i searched the web...

so i came to this web site after seeing a bunch of utubes, and reading and found a huge amount of information including some books i am reading. the awesome, intelligent, insightful Ms. calm morrison hoke (C.M.Hoke), and i am now doing small tests "getting Acquaintance Tests", with both drops of acids and metals and doing these and other tests and making notes what happens, including testing small aqua regia AR solutions that i have made from circuit boards.

testing like this i have found very interesting and informative. She (ms. hoke) has right, and doing things this way can help in determining what your doing and whats next. but i'm just a beginner to this field and appreciate any assistance and help provided.

my first of tasks is to gather small amounts of pure metals and solutions to carry out these basic test tube tests. this i have found most enjoyable. I have also downloaded several other books on the subject. so much reading... so much to learn...

i have a nice garage with test & machinery equipment in my county home away from city, i'm into metal working, forging, building all sorts of things and inventions, i love testing ideas. there is a large difference between reality, logic and experience in the field, i have always found.

i look forward to your comments now and in the future...

Thank you for listening!

.
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[FrugalRefiner]

i have a nice garage with test & machinery equipment in my county home away from city, i'm into metal working, forging, building all sorts of things and inventions, i love testing ideas. there is a large difference between reality, logic and experience in the field, i have always found.

Welcome to the forum Fred! It sounds like you're going about this the right way, for the most part. But if you have machinery equipment in your garage, you don't want to be refining in the same space. The fumes will soon leave a fine coating of rust on any iron or steel, and over time will completely ruin it.

I don't know where you got your copy of Hoke's book, but I encourage you to download one or both of the versions in my signature line. They include an introduction that will alert you to a few potential hazards in what Hoke teaches, and includes a lot of corrections from other versions I've seen.

Say Hi to Duke for me.

Dave

 

[duke1025]

Thanks for the info Dave! actually i do all chemical stuff outside of the shop, never inside. i learned pretty quick this stuff is strong and must be handled with care. also another reason for doing very small experiments in test tubes first, thats giving me the experience i require in a safe open area with ventilation.

 

[butcher]

Greetings Fred and Duke,

Fred, In a manner recovery and refining of precious metals, is similar to electronics, after all, we are dealing with moving electrons around.

Duke, those electrons are kinda like-charged balls on steroids (fun critters to chase around and to try and figure out where they're all going).

Learning and gaining an understanding of the basic principles, which gives you the foundation to build upon, to be able to gain experience, and an understanding of the working principles making deciding which way to go or what may be happening easier to understand, making troubleshooting problems a matter of logic.

Just as in electronics the better you understand the basic principles the easier it is to learn recovery and refining and how we can manipulate or follow these electrons...

 

[duke1025]

Thank you for your kind reply Butcher, yes, it does come down to electrons doesn't it... i found that out lately, and the fact that i forgot and didn't really think about it for more then 30 years, i am beside myself. but then chemistry was really never my strong subject, but i was interesting in material physics...but now i find it highly interesting when mixed with metals.. now i find i can't read enough about it...and experiment... :mrgreen: thanks for the encouragement!