lost and time sensitive in recovery of gold and silver AR

[jbmwsu]

Hi, new to the forum. Thank you for your replies in advance. I am not a chemist, I've just been scraping to pay the rent (and school loans . Please keep this in mind if you reply.This is my first time using nitric to dissolve silver and first time using aqua regia. I've read and read and watched Youtube and missed one, very essential part of the process. I had some scrap sterling and a lot of gold-filled jewelry about 3 pounds in all that I wanted to recovery/refine. I gave it all a nitric bath yesterday filtered out the liquid and noticed that some of the sterling didn't dissolve. I took out the sludge and large pieces and put them in AR about 30 minutes ago. The liquid I poured off was bluish but very very dark in color, not like the silver chloride as I have seen. I went ahead and put a piece of copper in to see if it would cement, nothing. I then put some non-iodized salt in to see if that would do the trick, nothing. I am out of state doing this project and have to return home early tomorrow morning, but I would like to finish up the job before I go home or at least get it to where I can transport it. I know that there is a lot of gold and silver in this batch just from doing the math, I just don't know what to do about getting it out now. I feel like I've wasted a lot of Nitric and have nothing to show for it. Very discouraged right now. A quick reply would be more than kind.

 

[etack]

Yep you wasted a lot of nitric and confused processes and made your life a lot harder. you need to put in Cu bar. set aside and read hoke the forum guided tour and read it again.


You have lots of silver chloride mixed in your gold.

The steps are here to get your gold but you must do the reading.

Eric

 

[element47.5]

Are you saying that you co-mingled your sterling with your gold-filled stuff and doused it all with nitric acid?

I'm speechless. I realize that does not help you, but you have to read up and develop an understanding of what's involved with refining. Put your mess aside in something that will hold it for MONTHS and read, and re-read, and study proper technique.

 

[etack]

Are you saying that you co-mingled your sterling with your gold-filled stuff and doused it all with nitric acid?

I'm speechless. I realize that does not help you, but you have to read up and develop an understanding of what's involved with refining. Put your mess aside in something that will hold it for MONTHS and read, and re-read, and study proper technique.

yep

then he put in AR and added salt :roll:

Eric

 

[goldenchild]

It never ceases to amaze me how people jump into this stuff so blindly. Especially with things this dangerous. jbmwsu, was this the video you happened to watch about adding non iodized salt?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I&list=UUulJxV7L-c3hiBhghfk1MYA&index=2&feature=plcp[/youtube]

 

[element47.5]

Especially with things this dangerous.

Quite so. My feeling is that there are lots of people out there who have had some serious bad luck with their attempts at refining, but on balance, they are extremely lucky that they still have functioning lungs are aren't in an emergency room somewhere.

 

[jbmwsu]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies... however I didn't need a lecture on how horribly wrong I did this. I messed up, I admitted it. Up there in the left hand corner you'll read "Refiners helping one another". I came here for help because I am new to this. I mean I did do this in my kitchen and my girlfriend is pissed about the smell, but she'll get over it, right?! Give me a break, I've served this country, buy and sell antiques, scrap gold and silver and have graduated from college, just not with a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry. Oh, just kidding about the whole doing it in the kitchen thing. I did this well away from others, wearing protective clothing, goggles, mask, apron and had distilled water with baking soda ready-at-the-go. Good so far? Yes, I have seen that video that has been posted, along with countless others, just not too many on recovering metal from gold-filled items. I am okay with reading about things and learning (philosophy graduate) love to learn, hate to be looked down upon for trying something new... So, please guide and direct, please don't be condescending. If the answers are in hoke, then I will read it. It just seemed a little hard to find answers for this particular problem (hence the post). If you are willing to guide and help please just message me. Thanks so much.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

Put your mess aside in something that will hold it for MONTHS and read, and re-read, and study proper technique.

As harsh as this might sound, at this point that would be the best thing for you to do. Put your mistake aside, the values are not going anywhere so long as you do not dispose of the solution. Eventually you will learn enough to extract the values from your solution. Although there might be people on this forum who might be able to give you a step by step procedure to fix your problem, I don't believe that would be the right approach. We have no idea how capable you are, regardless of you're telling us how capable you are. We have no idea how you will do whatever steps might be suggested. And many people feel that if they help someone and they do something wrong, or add something they should not have to a solution that is really an unknown, and it results in your being injured, or worse, that it would be partly their fault. Just in case you have not already realized this fact, the acids, fumes, chemicals that we deal with can be potentially dangerous, even life threatening.

I hope you are not so offended that you leave this forum. This is the one place where you can search, and find, answers to questions of this nature on the entire internet, backed by professionals who are actually doing what is being discussed.

Read C. M. Hoke "Refining Precious Metal Wastes" before you go any further. Make sure you do the familiarity tests. This type of chemistry is really about observing what you are doing and being able to make adjustments as you work with solutions. After you do the familiarity tests, and finish reading the book, you will at the very least understand the proper language to use when discussing what you are working on. You will also find that people here will be far more willing to help you, specially if you do what the majority of us have already done. We will be able to relate to you, and vice versa.

Scott

 

[butcher]

jbmwsu,

If you’re good buddy was about to walk off a cliff, do you think you might grab him and maybe throw him to the ground so that he did not step off the cliff?

That is what your friends here are doing, trying to help you, as they see it your walking blindly towards that cliff, the wish to stop you from falling off, these same friends will also try and help to get you back on the right track, they are not trying to put you down, although they may find it amusing some of the ideas people have of how to refine and how easy it would be after watching a couple of you tube home made movies, and may chuckle about that, but they are not laughing at you, I am sure after you spend some time here and learn more, you will look back and chuckle also.

Start with Hokes book, the guide to the forum, spend some time studying, you have a lot to learn, and these guys will help.

welcome to the forum, from reading your post you do have a lot of studying to do.

 

[jamaicanyute]

Do NOT throw anything out, first off. Did you do all your silver and GF all at once ? Your Nitric bath, how much have you used for just that process ????ml ? Your Ag(some, if not all, and GF base metals, it would be hard to recognize what is what ) is dissolved in that first process using nitric acid. So you need to cement out all that silver out of that solution using a copper bus bar. Your AR is gonna be full of gold and base metals and probably silver, do you have sodium metabisulfite ? You need to evaporate your AR to rid the solution of nitric acid, then you can cement everything that is in solution with a copper bus bar. This is a basic idea of what you gotta do to recover PM's from your acid solutions, the other situation you are gonna encounter is "time" this is not a very speedy process especially with large batches, my last batch of GF got messed up really bad, im still working on it to this day, my pm's are cementing out so slow, been working on it for like 2 weeks maybe 3 , ive lost track, been studying. Ive dropped 12 dwt of Au out of it so far and 8.5 dwt of Ag.
I learn something everyday from this forum, It has everything you need to know.

 

[galenrog]

I have to agree. Having been a lurker here for some time, I am still not ready to step into this arena, but that is another story. I hope that it is sufficient to say that I have read Hoke and need to read it again. I have some of lazersteves videos, and need the rest. I need to do the proving experiments in Hoke...several times. Before I set up my stripping cell, I need to understand the process. Before I dissolve foils, I need to understand the process. Before...well, you get the idea.

It will take time. The step by step processes are here. You need to first understand the process on paper, then prove the process with small scale experiments (as mentioned in Hoke), and lastly, increasing your scale to meed your new found capabilities.

Be safe. Go. Play. Have fun.

 

[butcher]

galenrog,
You will do well in this field, and most likely advance farther faster than those who jump in trying things they do not quite understand yet.
Good post keep up the good work, and thanks for trying to help others learn from your experience.