help! poor mans ar smb wont drop gold!

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chris.bozman42

Well-known member
Joined
May 1, 2011
Messages
47
ok i have used poor man ar to refine some high yield pins. i have gotten as far as adding the smb to drop the gold and nothing. i used muriatic and sodium nitrate in the proper fashion. i have had success with this before but have never done pins like these before. they are copper and heavy 22k plating. gold dissolved into solution but the smb wont drop it! the smb keeps cementing out! i tried taking my first test batch and diluted most of the acid out of the solution. left with cemented smb at the bottom. now i kept rinsing and the cemented smb ended up turning all the water and itself orange. almost like clauroauric acid. i have disgarged the small test batch of orange smb...i am now left with the gold solution pre smb. merely filtered off and into another beaker. the solution is a dark brown or extremely dark yellow. what do i do! thanks!
 
Your first problem was using AR on pins. It is much easier to use the crockpot method on pins. Boil them in hcl.
Take some time and search the forum, you will find all the info you need. You could also search sulfuric cell. Lazersteve has videos on his website and there is tons of info here on the subject.
 
i thought about doing the sulfuric cell but i had never done it before and went with my original methods but ive never done pins before. mainly scrap jewelry and cpus and fingers. i will attempt either the sulfuric cell or the hcl boiling. thanks for that info! now what do i do about the solution that has all my gold from my first little batch? i dont want to just disgard it and would like to reclaim the gold. if you could give me a little insight or lead me in the correct direction would be great! thanks again.
 
Did the pins totally dissolve? If so you could try cementing the gold out with copper sheet or buss bar. If the pins did not dissolve then you gold cemented out on the remaining base metal. Possibly kovar. You could also have nitric left over. If you use the copper it will use up the excess nitric and also cement the gold.
 
the pins did not dissolve at all minus the gold and there is still about 50% gold left on the pins. leading me to believe that my nitrate had been exhausted. also the reaction had stopped completely. now there does seem to be some sort of sedement or salts at the bottle of the pot with the pins in it. which i refilled with hcl to prep for boiling to attemp removing the plating that way and the sedement/salts still remain unhindered. no heat applied as of yet. now. i believe it cannot be left over nitrate because none of the copper pins have been affected which would react and drop the gold? right? my filtered solution has no sedements at the bottom. 100% liquid. only cememted the sedement when smb was introduced in test run.
 
bigjohn. since my solution is not dropping the gold with smb what do i need to do in order to get the gold to drop?
 
chris.bozman42 said:
the pins did not dissolve at all minus the gold and there is still about 50% gold left on the pins. leading me to believe that my nitrate had been exhausted. also the reaction had stopped completely. now there does seem to be some sort of sedement or salts at the bottle of the pot with the pins in it. which i refilled with hcl to prep for boiling to attemp removing the plating that way and the sedement/salts still remain unhindered. no heat applied as of yet. now. i believe it cannot be left over nitrate because none of the copper pins have been affected which would react and drop the gold? right? my filtered solution has no sedements at the bottom. 100% liquid. only cememted the sedement when smb was introduced in test run.
Click to expand...

i seriously doubt theres any gold in solution. you said you have done this before? did you let all the metal dissolve the first time you did this? any gold that was dissolved more than likely cemented out of solution on the base metal of the left over pins. did you test the solution with stannous chloride? how do you know you have gold in solution? if you have already done this before, you should know that unless you dissolve ALL the metal in the pins the gold will plate back out before you can separate the solution from the pins.
 
chris.bozman42 said:
bigjohn. since my solution is not dropping the gold with smb what do i need to do in order to get the gold to drop?
Click to expand...

Have you tested your solution with stannous chloride to ensure there is gold in solution before you try to precipitate it?
By the sounds of it, the gold will already have cemented out of solution on the undissolved metals from the pins which weren't dissolved in the first reaction.

Geo you beat me to it, I was still writting my reply when you posted but I will still include my response
 
I have used poor mans AR to refine jewelry and fingers before. Never the pins. I am out of stannous...i knew i should have made some lol. Its been 3 years since I have done any of this stuff and Im rusty to say the least and have never processed pins before. I will get some stannous going and test my solution. Now as far as the pins go, basically...do a substantially smaller amount of pins in the poor mans AR... Now someone up top mentioned boiling it in hcl to remove the plating and then collect and do an AR run with that. Whats your view on that guys? Better route than dissolving the pins entirely? I really appreciate the help fellas. Trying to get this batch out by tomorrow so I can go pay my xmas layaway off in time. Ive got 52.4 oz of the pins to go through. they are all really heavy plated military grade pins. Also have a collection of gold filled stuff I could process too but my main focus are these pins.
 
depends on the type of pins. if they are copper based, hcl alone will do little to dissolve it. if they are pins from CPU's, hcl will react once the metal (not the solution but the metal) reaches the temperature that hcl boils. AR is still the quickest method as long as its done correctly.
 
I only need $60 to pay my layaway off. i have a small batch going right now and they are all about done. now ive got it. so if i can drop this stuff tonight, let it settle for 12 hours and get what i can out of it. i believe i will get about $100 for the amount i can do real quick. I have about $3500 worth total i need to refine. Even if i have to stay up all night i will get it! fingers crossed!
 
Oh I see
Gotta love rushing to make payment....for anything...
AR with some heat and watch for gold to disapear, then filter and drop, repeat with other materials. You should get gold off but not completely as it will cement as the copper replaces it. Reason for watching. Quick disolve gold and remove material.
Save everything as you wont get it all this way. But you might get the hang of watching gold disapear and stopping it before it hits copper...Of course, this will lead to the problem of having Nitric in solution as it's not done.

I wonder if "tea bagging" would work ok... Make a basket or container to dip the pins in and pull out when gold dissapears. Putting another load in and another untill reaction stops...nitric gone. Then filtering and dropping...and saving to test to make sure you dropped it all as well as finish the pins when you have time to learn it right and can do it.

You will of course have to rerefine any powders you get from this. Maybe use HCL and clorox. 2 methods to get purer final product.

And of course.....Disclaimer here:
This is no way to do things right... You will not get a good product or all of it and will end up having to deal with the after effects of not doing it right. Just do it safely!!!

BS.
Thinking back to my first "know it all now" production line Poor man's ARing everything as garage was being torn down. Needless to say, I have a small amount of something in a bottle as a reminder...
 
I would filter everything out and then drop aluminium foil into the solution for an exchange. Which will drop a powder. Then start again.
donny
 
donnybrook said:
I would filter everything out and then drop aluminium foil into the solution for an exchange. Which will drop a powder. Then start again.
donny
Click to expand...

aluminum will drop almost all metals but that doesnt fix the problem. if you want to separate the PM's from the base metals and you have a solution with all metals dissolved, you dont want to use aluminum to cement with. copper would be a better choice. anything that will cement out of solution on copper is something you will want to keep.
 
Geo said:
donnybrook said:
I would filter everything out and then drop aluminium foil into the solution for an exchange. Which will drop a powder. Then start again.
donny
Click to expand...

aluminum will drop almost all metals but that doesnt fix the problem. if you want to separate the PM's from the base metals and you have a solution with all metals dissolved, you dont want to use aluminum to cement with. copper would be a better choice. anything that will cement out of solution on copper is something you will want to keep.
Click to expand...
Aluminum tends to gel in HCl and makes filtering impossible!
 

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