help with large gold fingers from newbie

[Anonymous]

hi, would appreciate your advice on these gold finger edges.
i have quite a lot of these, and would like to see if i can strip the gold
fingers myself rather than giving them to a refiner. my background is
scrap metal recyling(base metals) so am new-ish to this.

hope the photos uploaded as it will help if you can see these edges.
i have intructions on how to strip them using the nitric acid method
but out of interest i decided to see what would happen if i heated up
these edges with a blow torch, and was supprised when the gold fingers
just began to move and peel off.

i can strip a board in a few minutes using the blow torch, there are 2 sizes,
the smaller one contains 1.5 grms of stripped gold fingers and the larger board
contains 3 grms. i tested the gold fingers using acids we have as we buy small
amounts of gold jewelery, using the strongest acid to test up tp 22 karrat
the acid remaines clear for over a minute then began to go brown, does this
indicate a high karrat gold?

so my questions are?

1.is this a good way to strip them off as im unfamilar with
using chemicals, but am more than willing to learn?

2.if i have 31.1 grms of the stripped fingers, how much pure
gold could you expect once refined?

3. would i be better off selling the stripped fingers directly
to a refiner as they are(what whould they want to give)
or is there something else i should do to them or learn to refine
them myself, then who would be the best person to buy the refined
gold?

as i say i do have quite alot of these.

i would appreciate your advice and help on this matter.
great site by the way the sharing of this kind of information must
save alot of people some very costly mistakes.

thanks

richard. (uk)

ps:will not allow me to upload photos, i will email them to anyone who
may be able to help and would like to see them.

 

[Anonymous]

The Attachment/Image must be less than 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high?

 

[goldsilverpro]

You double posted. I will delete the duplicate post in the General Chat category. Someone will answer your questions when they have time.

 

[qst42know]

Have you visited lazersteve's website for videos on the process of stripping fingers?

 

[lazersteve]

Welcome to the forum,

By using heat to lift the traces from the finger boards you have not removed the copper and nickel from the gold. What you have are copper trace with nickel and gold plating on them.


I would put the traces in 35% nitric acid with gentle heating or Acid peroxide to dissolve away the base metals. From there you can follow the videos on my website.

Steve

 

[patnor1011]

Just got pics from richard and uploading them for him...

 

[nicknitro]

Some test equipment richard? These look very old school.

I would have to agree, the 1.5 grams of flakes pulled off from the fingers, could be a good start. At least there are a lot less base metals to deal with. However, the small flakes of gold could very well oxidize, and disappear. I think if you can control the heat in this initial process, then take the flakes and use like and AP solution or Nitric to dissolve the rest of the base metals, ie copper and nickel, you will get a better idea of how much gold is really in each finger.

In any case, go to LazerSteve's website, he has some excellent videos on finger processing.

The last suggestion, albeit a poor one is to just sell the flakes from your torched finger boards, on Ebay straight up at 1.5 grams. I'm sure they will go nuts for them there. LOL :roll: