Newby from UK

[GerryPridham]

Hi guys,

I have been admiring your forum from afar for three months, during which time I have accumulated about 10kg of scrap silver and a much much smaller amount of gold. I am lucky to have a "workshop" outside the house and have been busy (between contracts) getting it set up with a lockable store (a 19 inch rack cabinet to store chemicals), a 19th century safe (inherited from my dear departed aunt), a sink which does not yet have running water, and a fabricated fume hood (a wall mounted 19" rack cabinet with a bathroom extractor fan).

I have only done pilot # 1 with 100g of sterling silver and have only a 67% yield. More to do later - kept the solution. I am more interested in getting the set up right from the start (HSSE) so am very interested in the post about H2O2 and ethylene glycol.

I have participated in property forums in the past, but this is the first time I have revisited chemistry since I was 15 years old, when I blew the roof of my Dad's shed igniting a hydrogen balloon and consider myself lucky that my vial of nitroglycerine was not active, as I was throwing rocks at it to make it explode.

Over 40 years later, I have a revived interest in chemistry, with the objective of refining PGMs. The two year target is 50kg silver and 10 ounces of gold. We will have to see how that goes.

Name : Gerry Pridham
*** : Male
Age : 57
Location : Cheshire, UK
Profession : Contract IT project manager (ex multidisciplinary engineer)
Hobbies : Being a lounge lizard when my brain overheats
Interrests : Science, engineering, reading, politics
How long have you been refining gold? : Not started yet, but my wife has a long term hobby of collecting serious jewellery
What are you looking for in our community? : Advice, dialogue, safety, efficiency and anecdotal stories about PCM refining
How did you discovered our Forum? : Linked from a YouTube video when researching how to refine silver
Other : A bit obsessive/compulsive when it comes to not knowing what I want to do when I grow up

 

[GerryPridham]

I forgot to mention the rationale behind the revived interest in chemistry. I have an increasingly dim view on the value of fiat currency. All the western countries are busy competing with each other to see who can print more Quantitative Easing paper money. The UK, the US and Europe are printing so much money so fast that it will be worthless in my lifetime. I don't like shares, I don't like bonds, and we do have investment property. The revived interest is based on an assumption that within five years, we will witness silver in the $100 to $400 an ounce range, and gold in the $3,000 to $7,000 an ounce range. If I am wrong, I will have some fun along the way. If I am right, we will retire considerably more wealthy than earning 0.5% per year from bank deposits. LOL.

 

[element47.5]

Welcome to the forum and hail from the states!

Couple of things:

1: H2O2 and ethylene glycol.....Never heard of this, not even close. That doesn't mean there isn't some process that uses that combination of chemicals.

2: a sheet metal rack cabinet used as a fume hood will corrode and rust with extreme gusto. As will anything metal in an enclosed proximity to your operations, including your dear aunt's safe.

Jumping ahead; you have a very bullish outlook on silver/gold as vehicles for wealth or buying power preservation, and on that, I agree. To act on that, you wish to accumulate physical metals. I also agree. I would urge you to consider very carefully yet very simply whether it may be cheaper to simply buy those metals with the money you make from your work. Or, sell your raw materials to a refiner. I know that in the UK, you have to pay the dreaded VAT tax on bullion. That sucks. I also know that gold is at an all time high in GBPs.

All I am saying is that refining is not an easy way to acquire metals. It's not an easy way to do anything, because it's not easy. At the risk of sounding ghoulish, if you injure yourself seriously and cannot do IT work any longer, how much will you be paying for your gold under those conditions? I myself am one who would dearly love to get involved with refining but dammit, I cannot justify starting. I have some amount of room, not a lot, I have modest chem background. But I cannot see acquiring enough materials at enough below market price to make the effort worthwhile. Unless I am willing to work for pennies an hour. Which I'm not. I can't connect the start of the enterprise to the endpoint, which for me, like you, is to acquire gold & silver. So I am just urging you to work the math backwards. How much silver can you buy with a day's work in IT if you just go to a bullion dealer and plop your money on the counter? Whatever that number of oz is, if it takes you 5x as much time to gather the materials; .3 days (of IT work) to buy the chemicals, .2 days of IT work to buy the glassware and safety gear, 1.5 days of IT work to process the material, .5 days to melt an ingotize the material and take it for assay....with all due respect, how can you justify that?

 

[nickvc]

Gerry welcome to the forum.
Most members refine for a hobby and with the hope to actually make money, not maybe lots from their efforts. If you just want to invest your money in precious metals then keep your identifiable scrap in it's present form, coins and British hallmarked materials, they are a known commodity and either melt and assay your other scrap, the Sheffield Assay Office will do this for and their assays are widely accepted, or if you wish to learn how to refine then go to the guided tour and start from there. Refining and recovery isn't for everyone and there are ways to be involved in this forum and community without the chemicals and inherent hazards involved in their use. Read Hoke and keep reading it until it makes sense and keep collecting your materials to either process or have melted and try to find cheaper or even better free material to refine and keep.
I wish you luck it's always good to see another Brit on the forum.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Nicely and well said ya'll.
As a newby myself here, (less then a month), I am extremely tempted to dive in head 1st without even looking to see if there is water in the pool.
I have in the past done exactly that. Got the "gold bug", found instructions as well as chemicals...All the same person on Fleabay. Tested and then dove into mass production. I too was in IT and had tons of electronics for "refinning".
Needless to say, I rushed, lost the garage I had been working in. And in the end, wasted everything I could have sold whole and got maybe 1g of what could be gold. Sits on my tool box in a glass jar as a reminder to weight the pros/cons and end results before diving again.
This forum has been great at everything involved with the PGMs and what to do when you get the "BUG". 1st and formost, Don't even think of doing anything dangerous for any reason unless another's life requires it. PERIOD!
2nd thing I've learned reading through here is READ THE BOOK untill you dream about every word. Learn exactly what you are doing before you deside to indulge into this area of human "expertise".
ok, ok,...getting off the soap box now...
Hello, greetings ya'll and Good luck with the Hobby and always go for the gold.
Scott
Outside Valley Forge
S.E. Pennsylvania, USA
Where George Washington took many a dumps.

 

[butcher]

Pantherlikher,

welcome it sounds like your going to like it here.

 

[goldsilverpro]

Welcome to the forum and hail from the states!

Couple of things:

1: H2O2 and ethylene glycol.....Never heard of this, not even close. That doesn't mean there isn't some process that uses that combination of chemicals.

These chemicals are used for suppressing or eliminating NOx fumes during the dissolving operation. If used perfectly, they can supposedly double, at most, the amount of metal one can dissolve with a given amount of nitric. There are several patents on it and we have discussed it several times. I think Noxx has done some work using H2O2. I also think that there are patents using urea for the same purpose.

Gerry,

HSSE = High speed Silver Electrolysis. I think this is the Moebius silver cell improvement patented by a man named Adalbert Prior in Switzerland. It's pretty slick. However, maybe you should concentrate on the basics first. At this point, you only recovered a portion of what you should have recovered from the 100g of sterling.
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=silver+refining+ininventorrior&num=10