I bought a 600 g Goldfilled bar

[Aadams1026]

Hello fellow gold lovers,
I'm kinda new to the whole gold refining. I recently bought a 600 g Goldfilled bar for real cheep . Now my question is if I cornflake the Goldfilled bar and dissolve it in nitric acid and then dissolve the gold in Hydrochloric acid and bleach then precipitate it back now with SMB. Will that processes work and if not or if I'm close can you please let me know. I don't want to mess up what gold is in the the bar by doing the wrong process. Thank you in Advance. Anthony

 

[Palladium]

The first question is not how to recover the gold, but is there any gold to recover? Tell us the story of the bar and how it became such a good deal. Not trying to discourage you just pointing out the reality of you want to refine something, but yet you may not know if their is any gold there.

 

[philddreamer]

Hi Anthony!
Like Palladium stated above, please share with us a bit more information. You mentioned gold filled, so what karat?
Did you buy this "G.F." 600g bar from e-bay by any chance? Could this bar actually be gold plated?

That's going to be a lot of nitric in order to dissolve the base metals in you "corn flake" the bar...

A picture could also help.

Thanks!

Phil

 

[Palladium]

That gold is going to be really fine in size, purple, and hard to filter. Coffee filters probably won't work. Nitric first step to recover the gold and then on to refining.

 

[Aadams1026]

That gold is going to be really fine in size, purple, and hard to filter. Coffee filters probably won't work. Nitric first step to recover the gold and then on to refining.

Well here's how I got the bar. I buy a lot of gold filled jewelry watches so forth and so on and this just happend to be part of one of the lots I bought a bunch of 1/10th and1/20th gold filled items and I really don't know much about it except that "the guy told me" that it was gold filled items melted into a bar so that's what I'm going off of I don't know what was exactly melted or the kt purity of the goldi'm just going off of what I was told I'm hoping that is the truth but you never know I don't know if it was a refining process gone bad or what I'm just trying to make a couple bucks off of it if at all possibleif I can figure out how to upload a photo I will and it looks like someone has drilled a couple of holes in it to send off to get checked for purity. Thanks again Anthony

 

[solar_plasma]

After all, what I learned here, you need to know, what you have. Send a probe to an assayer or find somebody who owns an XRF.

If this is no option and you have the chemical knowledge to do this safely and the right way, you could try to dissolve 10g of it and you should be left with at least 0,3g gold,if this is really from gold filled.

 

[kurtak]

Anthony

palladium, Phil & solar_plasma have all given you good advice --- first you need to determine if in fact the bar has gold in it by testing a sample as solar_plasma suggested

Then as palladium said -"That gold is going to be really fine in size, purple, and hard to filter. Coffee filters probably won't work"

Also you are going to have at least some issues with tin as a result of tin being in the make up of the original base metal (brass)

Then like Phil said - "That's going to be a lot of nitric in order to dissolve the base metals if you "corn flake" the bar"

I don't know what you pay for nitric but 600 grams is about 1.33 lb's "most" of which is base metal so you are looking at close to 3/4 gallon more or less depending on the percent concentration of the nitric

It doesn't sound like you are set up &/or know enough about this to tackle a "low grade" item like this yet - so it likely wont be a quick &/or easy return on your investment

Personally - if it where my bar - what I would do is first test it to see if in fact it has gold in it - if the test results showed positive for gold I would then use the bar as a collector metal when smelting other low grade stuff like incinerated filters, incinerated anode bags from my silver cell, etc. - & I would continue to use it as a smelting collector metal till it was "loaded" enough with PMs to justify putting into the recover/refine process

Kurt

edit - to say - welcome to the forum

 

[kadriver]

If it was mine then I would set the bar on a refractory type brick on my hot table with about an inch hanging over the side of the brick. Place a metal container of tap water on the floor below the bar and sweat a few pieces off with a torch, letting the molten metal drip into the metal container of water.

Then I would put a few pieces in a beaker and dissolve with a little dilute nitric acid and heat. Once dissolved let it settle completely - this might take while. If there is some sediment after settling then carefully draw off the liquid with a pipette. Test this liquid with a drop of HCl to see if any silver chloride precipitates - gold filled does carry some silver.

Put the sediment in a spot plate and add four drops of HCl and one drop of nitric to form aqua regia to see if the sediment will dissolve. Test the resulting solution with stannous chloride to see if you have any gold.

If the bar is melted gold-plated pins then it will have no silver and no gold with the stannous test. Melted gold plated items are deceiving because it looks like gold, but there is not enough gold to do a recovery, and it just burns up nitric acid - lots of it.

Melting gold filled into a bar doesn't make much sense, but folks do some crazy things.

kadriver

 

[goldenchild]

I'd use it to plate gold out of first refined gold. You'll eventually get all the gold out of it.

 

[Anonymous]

I think that Solar and everyone else who has suggested testing a small sample have given excellent advice. I'd do that too before wasting a load of materials.