I finally graduated to MORON

[docone31]

I dissolved my gold by the inch, removing the base metal chains before the A/R solution ate them also.
I ended up with 4.5 gallons of solution. I was going to throw Urea into the mix as per Shor instructions, but LaserSteve advised me not to.
Hokay.
I tossed in some Urea to see if it fizzles. Nope, according to the Ishor site the nitrates are dissapated when the fizzing stops. The beads floated, and went away.
Now I have 4.5 gallons of some real black crud, with brown streaks all through it. There are also gold flakes that swirl around.
I filtered the mess through two filters. One a collander with coffee filters, two a funnel with one filter.
In the primary bucket, I have 2" of brown muck mixed in with black. In the two other buckets I have black muck. I also have a glass jar with used filters.
On an interesting note. In filtering I got these spikey balls with crystals on them that are grey in colour. I am presuming these are silver chloride. They have real brislty spikes.
Before I graduate to advanced MORON, What the heck do I do now?
Do I dilute with water?
Do I dilute with muriatic acid?
What do I do with my filters?
Is there a way I can use bleach instead of nitrate soda?
Arrrrrgh.
I have five buckets of black corrosive liquid.
I have been bugging Steve so much I would be suprised if he did not want me to jump in one of them.
My wife is afraid the light fixtures are going to corrode off the walls, I am afraid Bubba the Redneck who does our lawn is going to hit one of the pails, even though we told him about it. He already mowed our beloved Azalea bushes, our Jackaranda Tree, my banannas, my grape vine, my cycad palm, my wife's bamboo, and her Frangipani bushes. Most days, he is ok, some days he has been mudbogging. He likes beer.
He weed whacked our lilys, and creeping jasmine, and lots of other plants.
He keeps mowing our Aloe plants. I keep telling him they are not weeds.
He misses the weeds. They are native.
Anyone got any advice aside from getting a new lawn guy. He has been the only reliable one in five years.
Steve has been a great, great help. He has a life also. I like him.
Is there a simple way to process the mess and slowly eliminate the buckets? My lawn guy is coming any day now.

 

[scrapman1077]

"He has been the only reliable one in five years"
Re-read your own post.

 

[docone31]

Scrapman, you helped!
I reread my post, and dilution is needed. I just went out to experiment and I get a clear seperation with the acid diluted!
I watch LaserSteve's videos, and he is so organized, and neat. When I went out and cleaned up the way I saw Steve do it, I saw the seperation between the muck, and liquid.
Yay.
I can now dilute and neutralize the rest.
This will make filtering simple. From there, I can deal with seperating the desired metal from the mud. From the looks of it, I can mostly decant, then filter.
The Stannous test does not show positive in the filtered batches.
Any other ideas on this one?
After I am done with this batch, I will leave it for the pros. They paid their dues, that is for sure.

 

[Anonymous]

I think he ment reread about the yardman. :lol:

 

[lazersteve]

Doc,

I don't mean anything bad by this post, so please don't take it that way.

I have repeatedly given you very precise instructions via numerous PMs on processing your gold by the inch. Each time I gave you instructions you always added something to the mix that I did not specify.

If you are going to succeed at completing this batch you will need to follow whatever instructions you are given, in the order they are given, and complete each step before moving on. If you alter those instructions at all, in any way, you will not meet with success again.

From our PMs I can tell you that you need to slow down and take this task one step at a time. As I stated before, your first time through should have been a very small batch from start to finish, from scrap to nugget.

Your current batch is still salvageable, but it will take a lot of work since you have such a large amount of solution and sludge.

The sludge contains the bulk of your gold (perhaps even all of it, as you still have not tested the solution with stannous as I have instructed you in the beginning).The sludge also contains all sorts of other metals and compounds.

To get back on track start with a fresh bucket and place all the sludge in it.

Test your remaining liquid for gold using stannous. If it is barren, then set it to the side and handle that later. If it has gold in it then set it to the side to handle later. Yes either way set the liquid to the side.

Take a 1 liter beaker and add enough sludge to fill the beaker to the 100 mL mark. No need to be exact, we are just confirming the sludge has gold in it and, hopefully, how much.

Add 250mL of HCl to the beaker and heat it for 2 hours with lots of stirring. Do this outside as the fumes will corrode everything nearby.

Let the solution cool and settle.

Pour off the bulk of the acid being careful not to dump any of the remaining sludge out. Test this acid with stannous to be sure it contains no dissolved gold.

Add 250 mL of water to the sludge, stir, let settle, and pour this off into the 250 mL of acid being careful not to dump any of the sludge.

Repeat the above step again.

Now repeat the hot HCl treatment and the two water rinses again.

You now should have a 1 Liter beaker with a small amount of dark brown powder mixed with gray powder (maybe- if silver chloride was present).

Add enough HCl to cover the wet powder in the beaker.

Heat the beaker, acid, and powder to around 60C.

Add 1 cap full (about 1 tsp= 5mL ) of clorox to the hot HCl.

Stir the contents until no signs of fizzing are seen when you stir the contents. This step should last no less than 10 minutes.

Add a second 5mL of clorox to the reaction and stir as before.

Heat for 30 more minutes.

DO NOT ADD any more clorox, even if you still see powder in the flask.

Test a drop of the yellow liquid and confirm it contains dissolved gold.

Pour off the pregnant yellow liquid thru a through a charmin plug and filter until completely transparent.

Add 1 teaspoon of SMB to the clear yellow liquid with lots of stirring.

Test the solution for gold. If positive add another teaspoon of SMB, if not set it to the side for filtering and disposal.

Stop here or at any point where you get lost, and ask for more advice.

Add the old filters to your filter burn pile and save them up unitl you have enough to warrant burning them. I store mine in a USPS flate rate box.

If you end up with brown powder in your beaker where the SMB was added, you now have a process that you can follow to process the remaining sludge.

If you get stuck anywhere along the way. Post on this thread and we will work it out.

Take care and be safe,

Steve

 

[docone31]

Steve,
You walk on water.
I started with waaaay too much to begin with. I had read the Ishor tutorial and tossed my chain in a perforated bucket and let the acid cook.
From there, you know the rest.
I will adhere to your tutorial.
It is very clear. I have a 500ml beaker. I have done the Stannous test with the filtered solution. It does not show positive in the filtered liquid.
Now that I have done this, and all the reading I have done on refineing, alloying, and processes in general, at least I know what goes into makeing a gold alloy, and why it colours.
I appreciate it Steve.
I will print out this thread. It makes real good sense.
Thanks
Doc

 

[viacin]

the more I read about ishor, the more I don't like them.

 

[Noxx]

Welcome in the club

 

[docone31]

This time, I am following Steve's directions to the letter.
I have 25gallons of slurry to process, so it is going to be a while.
As I am heating the HCL, the flakes that float up to the top, are white. As the HCL heats, and I stir, they slowly turn yellow.
Way cool to watch.
In the bucket that I used to settle the solution, there is two inches of brown slurry with streaks of grey.
The heated solution, I am setting aside to settle. I have two gallons of heated solution so far.
I should have sent the batch to Steve to process in the first place. I just wanted the experience.
It has indeed been an experience.

 

[docone31]

As a final follow up.
I finally finished the whole process! Definate yay.
After going through the entire batch, diluting, boiling down, etc., I finally ended up with a considerable amount of black solid. It completely filled a Kerr Electromelt crucible.
I had dried it as completely as I could, then started heating it. Slowly so in the event there were any vapors, I could control it.
There were none. I increased the heat, slowly, crumbling any solid chunks as I could reach them.
I also used an older crucible.
Well, the deed is done!
When I let the crucible to cool, I had black powder, and some pretty nice gold colour nuggets in the bottom of the crucible.
I guess it was worth it after all.
There are still some chunks I was not able to process. Probably too deep in the crucible to mix in. I plan on powdering it all again, and doing a reheat/remelt. The filters were also added into the first melt.
It went without an hitch! Yay.
I did however get some interesting white "feathers" on the top of the crucible where the top closes it off. They completely covered the top of the interior of the crucible, and were quite fragile. They had distinct "leaves".
Within the chunks left, there are no visible gold balls. Still I am going to remelt with less mass. I primarily heated this way to eliminate any organics that might have entered the container during storage and filtering.
My thanks to all, especially Laser Steve, who took time to guide me to this point.
I am suprised I got any results at all, and definately pleased with the chunk I held in my hand.
Now, that was fun, and I did it.
I will have something to talk about in the future.
My hat is off to you guys! That is a lot of work that MUST be done in controlled condition.
It was worth it though. This time.
I did find a good refiner.
Thanks to all, it worked!