Need help with gold smelting 101

[MoneyShot]

First off, although I have a love a fever for gold, atm I’m a complete noob. So please no judgements against me. Upon my first effort to smelt gold powder into a bead, I seem to have lost the gold. What happened was I was given a rock of gold ore from Nevada. I know at least enough to know this was gold. I crushed the entire fist size rock all the way down to powder.. once thoroughly crushed, I panned it. The gold was very abundant, and it all sank to the bottom of my pan, was actually hard to get it out.. I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder. This stuff was very heavy for the amount it was. After watching a video or maybe 2, I thot I would try to smelt this powder into a button with my small, but effective propane furnace. I think my error lies in my “flux” if you can call it that. It was straight borax. I mixed 30g of powdered gold with (omg) at least 60 g of borax. Once in the crucible I slowly brought the heat close, scared to not blow all the gold powder out. Long story short what came out was not a button. The melted borax is a dark gray dark silver color and you can see powdered gold everywhere still mixed around with this meted borax. My question is not about what I did wrong, since I’ve done more research since then, but more about how to correct it and recover some if not all of the gold. I can answer any questions you may have to give a clearer picture of the situation but I’m not sure you need anymore. What can I do to recover some of this gold?

 

[MoneyShot]

First off, although I have a love a fever for gold, atm I’m a complete noob. So please no judgements against me. Upon my first effort to smelt gold powder into a bead, I seem to have lost the gold. What happened was I was given a rock of gold ore from Nevada. I know at least enough to know this was gold. I crushed the entire fist size rock all the way down to powder.. once thoroughly crushed, I panned it. The gold was very abundant, and it all sank to the bottom of my pan, was actually hard to get it out.. I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder. This stuff was very heavy for the amount it was. After watching a video or maybe 2, I thot I would try to smelt this powder into a button with my small, but effective propane furnace. I think my error lies in my “flux” if you can call it that. It was straight borax. I mixed 30g of powdered gold with (omg) at least 60 g of borax. Once in the crucible I slowly brought the heat close, scared to not blow all the gold powder out. Long story short what came out was not a button. The melted borax is a dark gray dark silver color and you can see powdered gold everywhere still mixed around with this meted borax. My question is not about what I did wrong, since I’ve done more research since then, but more about how to correct it and recover some if not all of the gold. I can answer any questions you may have to give a clearer picture of the situation but I’m not sure you need anymore. What can I do to recover some of this gold?

Any help is much appreciated, thank you

 

[Deano]

The important words in your post are "dirty gold powder". Natural gold in ore will always have a coating of base metals on it, the dirtier it looks the thicker the coating.
This coating will prevent the gold coalescing during a smelt, what you get are many very small beads in the slag.
To stop this happening you need to clean the gold before smelting. This is best done by putting the gold in a 10 to 20% HCl leach.
There is no magic time for this to clean the gold, it depends on the temperature of the leach and the thickness of the coating.
You leave the gold in the leach until it no longer looks in any way dirty.
If time does not matter to you then just leave the leach in a warm place checking it daily, it helps if you take photos every time you check it so you have a better comparison than just your memory gives.
You can speed it up by putting the beaker of gold and acid on a hot plate at about 50C, any hotter than this and you will need a fume cupboard to dispose of the fumes. Under these conditions you should check it hourly for completion.
If you have got the gold really clean you will not need to have any flux in your smelt, it will coalesce as if by magic.
If your gold is cleanish you will need just borax as a flux.
Deano

 

[Golddigger76]

If it was actually gold then you should be able to wash the borax off of your gold powder with boiling water, several boiling water washes.

Your description of what was left after the smelt attempt indicates that it was not pure gold powder or it would have simply melted the gold, however once you have washed away the borax from your gold powder you should set it aside and maybe study a bit more until you have some proper plans and flux on hand or study how to recover and refine the gold with acids.

I doubt that the boiling water washes will wash away melted rock or base metals so only expect the borax to wash out.

Someone else who has more experience with smelting ores may chime in with a easier way or a flux that can be used without washing the borax out first.

 

[Golddigger76]

Never mind lol Dean beat me to it with a little more detail

 

[Martijn]

First off, although I have a love a fever for gold, atm I’m a complete noob. So please no judgements against me. Upon my first effort to smelt gold powder into a bead, I seem to have lost the gold. What happened was I was given a rock of gold ore from Nevada. I know at least enough to know this was gold. I crushed the entire fist size rock all the way down to powder.. once thoroughly crushed, I panned it. The gold was very abundant, and it all sank to the bottom of my pan, was actually hard to get it out.. I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder. This stuff was very heavy for the amount it was. After watching a video or maybe 2, I thot I would try to smelt this powder into a button with my small, but effective propane furnace. I think my error lies in my “flux” if you can call it that. It was straight borax. I mixed 30g of powdered gold with (omg) at least 60 g of borax. Once in the crucible I slowly brought the heat close, scared to not blow all the gold powder out. Long story short what came out was not a button. The melted borax is a dark gray dark silver color and you can see powdered gold everywhere still mixed around with this meted borax. My question is not about what I did wrong, since I’ve done more research since then, but more about how to correct it and recover some if not all of the gold. I can answer any questions you may have to give a clearer picture of the situation but I’m not sure you need anymore. What can I do to recover some of this gold?

Welcome to the forum, good advice for melting actual gold, but warning: sceptic here, why would anyone give you a rock with gold?
Is it because of possible Asbestos inside that will be released when crushing? Did you wear a dust mask?

And then to repeat golddigger76: how do you know it is gold? you rarely get gold powder from crushing one rock. It will be smaller and bigger flakes and some fine powder. When it's a lot of powder, it could be pyrite or some yellow mineral.
Then most rocks and rock dusts fall to the bottom of the pan when washing, so that's not saying much about precious metal content.

So are you sure it in fact is gold? If yes, how do you know?

If absolutely sure, then follow Deano's advice.

 

[orvi]

First off, although I have a love a fever for gold, atm I’m a complete noob. So please no judgements against me. Upon my first effort to smelt gold powder into a bead, I seem to have lost the gold. What happened was I was given a rock of gold ore from Nevada. I know at least enough to know this was gold. I crushed the entire fist size rock all the way down to powder.. once thoroughly crushed, I panned it. The gold was very abundant, and it all sank to the bottom of my pan, was actually hard to get it out.. I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder. This stuff was very heavy for the amount it was. After watching a video or maybe 2, I thot I would try to smelt this powder into a button with my small, but effective propane furnace. I think my error lies in my “flux” if you can call it that. It was straight borax. I mixed 30g of powdered gold with (omg) at least 60 g of borax. Once in the crucible I slowly brought the heat close, scared to not blow all the gold powder out. Long story short what came out was not a button. The melted borax is a dark gray dark silver color and you can see powdered gold everywhere still mixed around with this meted borax. My question is not about what I did wrong, since I’ve done more research since then, but more about how to correct it and recover some if not all of the gold. I can answer any questions you may have to give a clearer picture of the situation but I’m not sure you need anymore. What can I do to recover some of this gold?

It may be possible that you did not reached the temperature needed for gold to melt.
If you crush the slag/gold mass you created, does the particles of gold appear like they have been molten ? If gold reached melting point, you will see more globular particles with rounded edges, opposed to rough and sharp pieces from original crush+panning.

What torch/furnance you used ?
Were the slag+gold mixture thick and viscous (like honey or glue) or relatively fluid ?

There are three distinct possibilities I can see - temperature was low (borax melt at relatively low temperatures, typical native gold alloys need at least 1050°C to properly melt), particles of gold were covered in some oxide/impurity layer that did not dissolved in borax, or you do not have gold in your ore.

You can check if you have enough temperature to melt gold - if you can melt copper, you can also melt gold. You can easily source some old copper wire, put it into the crucible and do what you did before. If you can obtain runny metal puddle, not sticking to the walls of crucible, your setup is powerful enough to melt gold.

 

[Heavy-Black-Sand]

I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder.

Hardrock ore can be tricky to work with, especially for beginners ..... with hardrock ore, it's not uncommon after crushing the rock to have alot of heavy minerlaization at the bottom of the pan that looks/moves like dirty gold ..... however, it may not be gold, or it may only contain a very small amount of gold ..... find someone who has the skill to test your heavy concentrate to make sure your not wasting to much time.

 

[billgold]

One thing is for sure. No fist sized piece of rock containing fine sized gold particles is going to contain 30 grams of gold - probably not even 30 mg.

 

[Thomas M Joseph]

Welcome to the forum, good advice for melting actual gold, but warning: sceptic here, why would anyone give you a rock with gold?
Is it because of possible Asbestos inside that will be released when crushing? Did you wear a dust mask?

And then to repeat golddigger76: how do you know it is gold? you rarely get gold powder from crushing one rock. It will be smaller and bigger flakes and some fine powder. When it's a lot of powder, it could be pyrite or some yellow mineral.
Then most rocks and rock dusts fall to the bottom of the pan when washing, so that's not saying much about precious metal content.

So are you sure it in fact is gold? If yes, how do you know?

If absolutely sure, then follow Deano's advice.

Cannot stress this enough, "did you wear a mask?". There are two types of rock dust, them that kills you quick and them that kills you slow. Please take precautions.

 

[Andrew Ray]

First off, although I have a love a fever for gold, atm I’m a complete noob. So please no judgements against me. Upon my first effort to smelt gold powder into a bead, I seem to have lost the gold. What happened was I was given a rock of gold ore from Nevada. I know at least enough to know this was gold. I crushed the entire fist size rock all the way down to powder.. once thoroughly crushed, I panned it. The gold was very abundant, and it all sank to the bottom of my pan, was actually hard to get it out.. I collected all the gold stuff from the bottom of multiple pans until I had about 30 grams of what I would call dirty gold powder. This stuff was very heavy for the amount it was. After watching a video or maybe 2, I thot I would try to smelt this powder into a button with my small, but effective propane furnace. I think my error lies in my “flux” if you can call it that. It was straight borax. I mixed 30g of powdered gold with (omg) at least 60 g of borax. Once in the crucible I slowly brought the heat close, scared to not blow all the gold powder out. Long story short what came out was not a button. The melted borax is a dark gray dark silver color and you can see powdered gold everywhere still mixed around with this meted borax. My question is not about what I did wrong, since I’ve done more research since then, but more about how to correct it and recover some if not all of the gold. I can answer any questions you may have to give a clearer picture of the situation but I’m not sure you need anymore. What can I do to recover some of this gold?

Use a collector metal such as Pb then cupel the bead

 

[Yggdrasil]

Use a collector metal such as Pb then cupel the bead

Welcome.
Moneyshot has not been here since 2023.
Anyway, his major problem was lack of heat so the slag/Borax did not get hot enough.
There is no need for collector metal if you have already concentrated it to mostly pure metal.