Non-Chemical need some opinions on the next step to take

[whitesid]

this is my first attempt ever for recovering gold from fingers. i have a plan that i think should work but i wanted to have some other opinions because i can be completely wrong.
so far i have stripped the foil off the fingers. witch is gold plated copper. what i was thinking was that in order to separate the copper and gold i should put them in nitric acid. the copper will go into the solution as copper nitrate and leave all the gold on the bottom. then after i got my gold i could use iron to recover my copper from the solution.
does this sound right to you expert refiners :?: like i said this is my first time and from what i read so far it seems like it should work

 

[Harold_V]

The plan is correct, but not complete. In spite of having dissolved what you consider to be all the base metal, that isn't how it works out in practice. The gold will be contaminated with traces of base metal, in spite of having been given a boil in dilute nitric.

If your goal is to recover gold, with no regard for its purity, you can wash the gold foils well, then melt them to create a button of questionable purity---likely less than 99% pure.

To purify the gold, instead of melting, it should be refined by dissolved with one of the various methods that are promoted on this forum, including aqua regia (if you have nitric, it's the fastest and easiest way to dissolve gold).

In order to become familiar with this process, please pay attention to my sig line. You need not buy the book, for it can be downloaded now-----although a hard copy is nice to have in your library.

Hoke will teach you the proper processes to recover values you are likely to encounter. Unless you are an experienced refiner, you should obtain a copy of her book. What it will do is keep you from asking questions of people with experience ---questions that are common knowledge amongst refiners.

She also guides you through various processes in plain English, in such a fashion that if you are not familiar with chemical terms, you can still make sense of her instructions. The book was written with the layman in mind.

Recovering copper from the solutions can be accomplished as you suggest, and is the method of choice, although there is no ready market for the recovered copper. You are likely to end up sending it to the land fill, in spite of its value. You'll come to discover that it is not economical to melt unless you have a large volume and have access to a cupola or a reverberatory furnace. Melting in a crucible furnace is very destructive of the crucible and furnace lining due to the large amount of flux that is necessary. You are likely to melt at a loss.

Harold