Help with mishap!

[dansdismantling]

Good afternoon!! So I got sidetracked and left a batch of fingers in cucl2 on one of my hot plates and it was on low but as I stated I got sidetracked and forgot about it. It went all night and when I returned in the morning the hot plate was red hot and my materials were all charred and stuck together. The trimmed finger boards are G10 material. I then let it cool and poured in some hcl and let it set for a few days. It has since loosened up but is all a melted charred mess!!! Pretty bummed. Could anyone offer some advice as to how to recover the gold from the charred remains?? The material is from the late 60’s and anticipate about 4 grams of AU is still in this mess.

 

[nickvc]

My advice would be to boil the material in water and after that incinerate it , then boil the residue in HCl decant rinse well with water and then use AR to recover the gold , it may well be a dirty drop so a second refining may well be needed.
If you don’t want to go that route you may be able to do a recovery by using AR which may recover your gold.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Good afternoon!! So I got sidetracked and left a batch of fingers in cucl2 on one of my hot plates and it was on low but as I stated I got sidetracked and forgot about it. It went all night and when I returned in the morning the hot plate was red hot and my materials were all charred and stuck together. The trimmed finger boards are G10 material. I then let it cool and poured in some hcl and let it set for a few days. It has since loosened up but is all a melted charred mess!!! Pretty bummed. Could anyone offer some advice as to how to recover the gold from the charred remains?? The material is from the late 60’s and anticipate about 4 grams of AU is still in this mess.

As Nick says, but how much material are we talking about?
It may be easier to smelt it with some Lead or Bismuth and Cupel it after.
Depends on how you are set up.

 

[anachronism]

As Nick said but I wouldn't bother incinerating. It'll come out in the wash without that step.

 

[dansdismantling]

As Nick says, but how much material are we talking about?
It may be easier to smelt it with some Lead or Bismuth and Cupel it after.
Depends on how you are set up.

Only around maybe 4 grams so not much but enough to chase lol. Thanks

 

[dansdismantling]

My advice would be to boil the material in water and after that incinerate it , then boil the residue in HCl decant rinse well with water and then use AR to recover the gold , it may well be a dirty drop so a second refining may well be needed.
If you don’t want to go that route you may be able to do a recovery by using AR which may recover your gold.

Sounds good. I will proceed that way. And go from there. Without incidents like this we wouldn’t have experience!! Lol thanks for your reply!!

 

[Yggdrasil]

Only around maybe 4 grams so not much but enough to chase lol. Thanks

Not the expected Gold, total material.

 

[dansdismantling]

Around 500 grams of material. Just over 1lb

 

[nickvc]

If Jon thinks you can miss out the incineration then I will yield to his better knowledge of e scrap and just go for the AR recovery.

 

[snoman701]

I unfortunately doubt you'll be able to do it without incineration. The boards from the milacron are some weird resin and seem to react to AR. For sure try it though, as it's the easier of the options.

 

[dansdismantling]

I unfortunately doubt you'll be able to do it without incineration. The boards from the milacron are some weird resin and seem to react to AR. For sure try it though, as it's the easier of the options.

They’re G10. I will try boiling them to soften the material and get materials as clean as possible first with most likely multiple water exchanges until manageable. I have plenty of other materials to concentrate on so these can just be on the back burner lol no pun intended considering that’s what got me here in the first place!!!

 

[snoman701]

Yeah, but 1960's G10 is very different from modern day. The resin softens quite readily and turns into a goo with chemical exposure. I'm not sure if it's the size of the fiberglass strands or the resin itself, but the stuff makes a mess. I've had it go "limp" from AP exposure only.