Mini AP process, cold weather.

[Geo]

weight in foils never translate into refined weight,i wish it did.there's always contamination in the foils (bits of plastic,string,inorganic material).

 

[barnes8888]

barnes8888,
Hydrochloric acid is a solution of hydrogen chloride in water also called HCl or muriatic acid, a very old name was spirit of salts, because it can be made from normal salt (NaCl) (table salt) and sulfuric acid, some country's used the name Acidum salis (salt acid).

Hydrogen chloride is a gas if this gas is bubbled into water it is then called hydrochloric acid.

Many of our acids are gases dissolved in water.

thank i knew Hydrogen chloride was a gas so it confused me a bit im nit very good with the scince bit but i do get a lot of computer parts so i might as well do something with them i have learned alot off people on here so thank you everyone you have all bin great .

 

[spooks69]

Thank you Geo. You have brought up a great point. It is fun to watch the reaction in these small batches, but it is about time to get down to business. I have to process these pins one by one because they have a small steel spring in side of them that has to be removed, because I don't want to have to deal with iron mucking things up. So I will focus on process all the pins and then just do one or two large batches.

Also I wanted to let everyone know that the fish tank heater, used to heat the water bath that my reaction jars were submerged in worked great! Actually worked better than I had imagined. It did in 2 days what, even in the summer took over a week. I dont know how long the heater would have held out but it did a great job finishing up this last batch. So I have finished up these small jars tonight and I have put things away untill I scale things up like Geo has suggested.

Butcher,
Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier. The weather here has been a typical east TN winter, cold and wet, more wet than too cold though. Almost freezing at night and gloomy and chilly during the AM. Lol. But so far it's better than last year where we had 3 ice storms by this time.




Try cloud browse I use it to surf flash sites.

One more question. Does anyone know if there is a way I can view Steve's videos on my iPad? My wife got this for me for Christmas instead of a new PC, it's pretty great but there is still a lot I have to figure out.

 

[Harold_V]

weight in foils never translate into refined weight,i wish it did.there's always contamination in the foils (bits of plastic,string,inorganic material).

I had a very negative experience with a person who had been recovering gold from escrap (primarily pins), albeit many years ago.

The guy was bright, had figured out that he could eliminate base metals by using nitric acid, which was readily available and reasonably priced back then (late 70's). He brought me a small tub (Dreamwhip) with a pound of foils enclosed. Unfortunately, they were wet, and also contained bits of insulation and other debris, as one might imagine.

I processed his material without so much as a thought. The yield was near six ounces. When he came to pick up his gold, he was livid.

"Where's the rest of my gold?", he asked.

I informed him that I had withheld my percentage, and that the balance was there.

"Not good enough", or words to that effect, he replied.

I had just finished the material, so I still had the filter, along with the contaminants. I placed the container on a scale, placed his gold within, then filled the container with water to the witness line. By adding the filter to the weight, we were almost dead on one pound, the weight received.

Nothing I could tell this man could make him happy. He went away knowing I had stolen his gold. I never heard from him again, needless to say.

I treated him with total honesty. He had expectations based on greed, not reality.

Set your expectations low. If, by chance, you find more than you anticipated, the thrill of the excess will far outweigh the unhappiness you'll experience when the three ounces you "just knew" were there, were not.

Note: I have related this story before, but I am trusting to memories that are very old. I may not have repeated the story exactly as it shook out, but this gives you the idea.

Harold

 

[tek4g63]

Wow Harold, that sounds like a very unplesant situation. Thing like that would make me never want to refine for other people ever again (not that I do now, or would I in the future. Just relating to the story). When people get that gold fever it seems to cloud their common sence. I know that my refined yealds will be less than my recovered foils and that is exactly why I wanted to post them here. I wanted to show and new comers that my stumble upon my post how the whole process pans out when they first get started. Videos like Lasersteve's and many others have been made by experenced refiners. They are great teaching and learning tools, but I thought this might be a good way to show what a new (hobbiest) refiner may encounter. I hope its ok to use this post in that manner.

I clean my foils very well and because I only process pins (throughly washed) then dry them completely before storing them, I'm hoping to show that there is still impureties that get removed in the refining process. I will be completely happy with any ammount of gold I get, because it was more than I had before I started. 8) .

When I get ready to do fingers and cell phone boards I would like to post my process again with my recovered foil weight, then my refined powder weight, then my button weight. But that will be a while from now.

Thank you all for your guidance and advice! If it were not for his forum I surely would have made many more mistakes and maybe even given up on the hobby all together.