Hangers for Jewlery plating operation

[RoadKing13]

Hello, I have a real estate clean-out business. I recently was hired to clean out a commercial property that once housed a jewelry manufacturing business. As part of the business they had a small plating operation in a back room. I did some inquiring with a former employee and found that they routinely plated Gold and Rhodium on jewelry. They left behind the two objects which appear to be copper hangers where they placed their objects to be plated. There is a large amount of build up of what appears to be PM on the fingers of the hangers. I would like a bit of direction on how to process these hangers and recover any PM present.

 

[RoadKing13]

I broke a few pieces off of the gold hanger as seen in the attached image.

 

[UncleBenBen]

Welcome to the forum Roadking. I'm sure you will get better information than I can offer, but from what I understand, you likely have some quite pure metals there. Only they can tend to be built up in layers of different metals and a pain to process if they are.

I will tell you that unless you plan to take on refining as an ongoing hobby or even profession, you might consider just selling as is. There would be no way to tell you how to do it in few paragraphs, or even chapters. It would take months out of your life. Then you would be hooked and half crazy like the rest of us here! Get out while you still can, before it ruins your life! :lol:

Seriously though, I'm looking forward to reading what the guys have to say here. That looks like it could be a pretty decent find on your part.

 

[nickvc]

With the possibility of rhodium Lou may well be he man to talk to as its not an easy metal to refine.
If they left behind this there may well be other less obvious values in the building, any old solutions, any polishing machines that look dirty, if you still have access take a few more photos and we will try to see if there is more to be found.

 

[goldsilverpro]

Those racks are in terrible shape. A good plater never would allow the nodule build-up to get to that point. The nodules are made up of 100's of alternating layers of probably gold, rhodium, nickel and, from the color, it looks like copper. Also, the 1st pic looks like silver but it might be nickel. The color of the nodules is always due to the last metal that was plated. I doubt if the gold and rhodium content is more than 3 or 4%, and that might be pushing it. Check this link. It mainly involves plating media (balls) but the layering is the same on the nodules. Tricky stuff to refine. I would probably try hot 50/50 nitric first.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=1415&hilit=nodules

 

[4metals]

Years ago I used to get in drums of steel plating hooks from a manufacturer, same thing layer upon layer of different types of plating. Because of the steel we couldn't melt them but the plating was brittle, as is the plating on these or it wouldn't break off so easily. What we did was ball mill them, what came out was naked hooks, and what looked like glitter. A magnet took out the hooks. The glitter was collected together and melted. Then it dissolved easily in the nitric.

These contact points I would break off and mill them, or go to a refiner and watch them be milled and melted and sampled.

I just realized this guy came here for one answer and hasn't been back. Oh well, maybe some of our other members will know what these are now if and when they see them. As Chris said, the layers make them hard to process, especially if there was silver layered with gold.