Inquarting with unknown metals - possibly steel?

[renkenbw]

Hey all. I have been using silver to inquart karat gold of known origin. However, I would like to use some items I am less sure about as my extra metal. I want to use gold plated pins and items so that I can get the very small amounts of gold in my results. However, I am concerned about steel (iron) or other less desirable metals in my initial nitric acid run. I want to (later) refine silver out of that and don't want anything messing with that.
Is it OK to use less "pure" metal combinations for my inquartation?
I hope this question makes sense to you all. Looking forward to some feedback.

 

[kernels]

Using pins that are known to be Copper base is a really good idea, might have to steal that one! The only downside is the extra Nitric acid required to consume Copper over Silver.

It would be fairly easy to separate out any pins container iron magnetically, I wouldn't bother using them.

Unknown non-magnetic pins could be Brass or Bronze base, so you could have either Zinc or Tin in there. Obviously Tin would be a pretty bad idea for Nitric separation.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Personally, I'd rather use silver to inquart and use the pins in my stock pot.

Using silver to inquart will use less nitric than a copper based alloy. Also, if there are any PGMs in your feed stock, they will tend to follow the silver in the nitric leach and not affect the gold purity. They can then be captured in the slimes in a silver cell.

Dave