Paperchaser,
This is an adventure like a long journey, it will take time to learn, you can spend a lifetime learning it and still not learn everything about it, to begin learning the art of recovery and refining of precious metals, We suggest you begin with C.M. Hoke's book refining precious metal wastes, this book is geared more towards jewelry scrap, dental waste and the like, as it was written before the electronic scrap was a viable source, but this book is very helpful in understanding the basic principles of recovery and refining of any type of scrap, when you understand what it is teaching, this book can be found in the book section as a free download, many members list a link to the free download to the book in their signature lines, members here like frugalrefiner and the printable copie. you can also buy Hoke's book if you wish I bought mine from action mining for a little over $60.00 (worth every penny)
Probably the most important place to begin is with the safety section, and learning the many dangers involved and how to keep from harming yourself or others, working with any chemistry is dangerous, and when working with these strong acids and bases we produce deadly gases, can easily form explosive compounds, and produce toxic waste that needs to be dealt with properly, and disposed of responsibly. Dealing with waste in the safety section will get you started here. learning to deal with your waste not only will you to keep yourself and others safe, it can help to keep you from getting into serious trouble with the authorities when they come knocking at your door wondering what you are doing.
In the general chat section, you will find the general reaction list, and the guide to the forum, taking the guided tour will introduce you to much of what we do, there are tons of documents and posts on the forum where you can learn, the forum is a vast library of information, where most any question you can think of in this field can be researched, the search button can be helpful here, Many of the members also have useful web sites of their own, with information that is helpful.
Memory fingers, karat gold or sterling silver are probably some of the easier materials to begin with when you start learning, each type of scrap may need different pretreatments and procedure's, sometimes the procedures can be similar, and sometimes their may be more than one way to recover or refine them.
Small details may at first seem unimportant when you first begin learning, but you will soon begin to see that sometimes these small details can make the difference between success and failure...
Welcome to the forum, studying here and finding these precious nuggets of information is just as good as seeing color in your pan, and sometimes even better, this forum is just a gold mine just waiting for you to explore it.
