Made A Big BoBo Hel Needed.

[FunForFree33]

Ok I messed up. I had 3.2 grams of 22k+ nuggets I got from gold panning. The problem was some had some mercury on it from the stream it came from so I decided I was going to melt it into a ball. Well I took it to work to use the torches and found a big metal bolt with a hex head and figured I would use that to melt it into and then simply tap out the gold ball. Yup thats what I thought.. Well the bolt started to melt and mixed with the gold and it all got stuck inside the hex head. So I dont know what to do. Should I just toss the bolt in the trash and cut my loss or is there a way to get the gold back? Anyone wanna help me out if there is a way?

 

[Oz]

Maybe you should forget about your gold for a minute and instead seek medical advice and testing this morning. Tell them you were melting mercury with a torch and are now concerned you may have poisoned yourself.

 

[dtectr]

Maybe you should forget about your gold for a minute and instead seek medical advice and testing this morning. Tell them you were melting mercury with a torch and are now concerned you may have poisoned yourself.

He's not kidding ...

 

[FunForFree33]

Maybe you should forget about your gold for a minute and instead seek medical advice and testing this morning. Tell them you were melting mercury with a torch and are now concerned you may have poisoned yourself.

He's not kidding ...

Why that would only be nessacary if I breathed in the fumes right? If thats the case then I am fine. No way I breathed in any fumes.

 

[patnor1011]

You may absorb some through your skin too. Anyway, do not use mercury if you do not know how to do it properly and safe. I for one doubt that there is stream with mercury/gold nuggets in it. Get some information on mercury retort. Your gold is not lost, it can be retrieved however at this moment do not try that yourself.
Start with spending more time here getting knowledge and you will be able to get it out later. Save your bolt for experimenting later when you will put your knowledge to use. You have only about 100+ $ worth of gold in that bolt so I believe you are not hard pressed to get that out asap.

 

[Drewbie]

Rule of thumb: If you have any PM's with mercury added, sell at a discount to someone who can deal with it without killing themselves or someone else.

AVOID.

 

[jeneje]

A quote for you "Never jump in blind, it's leads to stupidity!"

 

[FunForFree33]

Yes lesson learned. I wont make that mistake again. I did save the bolt and hopefully the gold can be taken back.

 

[rbramsey]

I for one doubt that there is stream with mercury/gold nuggets in it.

I will have to disagree. I dredge a creek where you could see bb sized balls of mercury as plain as day. Yahola (I think it is spelled correctly) creek had as much gold as mercury in it. Actually it was a good sight to see. Where there's mercury there's gold. That creek had nice course flakes.

I don't remember what ever happened to that gold, or what we did to separate it.

Richard

 

[dtectr]

I for one doubt that there is stream with mercury/gold nuggets in it.

I will have to disagree. I dredge a creek where you could see bb sized balls of mercury as plain as day. Yahola (I think it is spelled correctly) creek had as much gold as mercury in it. Actually it was a good sight to see. Where there's mercury there's gold. That creek had nice course flakes.

I don't remember what ever happened to that gold, or what we did to separate it.

Richard

Yep - the old-timers would actually run mercury through their sluices for a clean-up - big, rough, leaky & all (the sluices, not the old timers) and then use a potato for a retort (and RE-use, too!)! Sometimes I wonder how they made anything.

 

[godofwar]

mercury is BAD BAD news .... look up cellular/neurological recession after contact with mercury and mercury poisoning ..... if you are around any children and pregnant women after handling that gold..... you need to clean up children are very very very sensitive to mercury and growth to babies can be damaged neurologically causing a recession...
for you and everyone else around you please take all precautions.... suggested by MSDS and never hurts to be over cautious...

 

[Harold_V]

I did save the bolt and hopefully the gold can be taken back.

Cut off the head, saving only the portion that shows gold, which is likely VERY rigidly soldered to the bolt material. Trust me, you did not melt the bolt, nor did they alloy. although some iron may have been dissolved by the gold.

Using dilute sulfuric acid, or even HCl, soak the head until it has been dissolved. Don't do this indoors unless you have a fume hood. That should leave your gold in relatively decent condition, although in need of being refined. You may find that there are some tiny bits that didn't accumulate in the largest mass, so save anything that doesn't dissolve.

Do yourself a favor and put the recovered gold away until you know what you're doing. You obviously don't right now. No one in their right mind melts precious metals in ANY type of metallic vessel.

Read Hoke and gain an understanding of what it means to refine, and how it's done. If you fail to heed this advice, you are likely just changing the type of problem you'll have to address next.

And----try to remember that it's always a good idea to know how to walk before you try running.

Harold