Now what do I do?

[PerfectlyFlawed]

I posted a thread awhile back about discovering an old army switchboard behind my barn and in my spare time I have been breaking these little pins out. I have about 2,500 of them out now. They weigh .75g each but what should I do with them now? Should I try to refine them myself or take them somewhere and how much does that cost?

Also what is a guesstimate on gold content? Someone told me gold filled was 4% gold but I read on here someone else refined an old switchboard and said the pins were 20-30% gold? Is that true cause like whoa if so

 

[kernels]

These are presumably just Gold plated pins, so yield is probably going to be more like 4g/kg, giving you around 7.5g pure Au, or about US$360

The investment in time and effort to learn how to recover and refine the Gold would probably not be worth it if you are only intending to process this one batch.

I would say that 30% Gold is dreamland type stuff and even 4% would be wildly optimistic. Either way, you probably want to try and find someone local and trustworthy to process a smallish amount and find out for sure .

 

[niks neims]

Or sell them on Ebay, start an auction at 200-300 $ /kg, you'll probably get more than gold value...

 

[PerfectlyFlawed]

They aren't gold plated they are army grade gold filled so I read online that that meant they were probably triple dipped to ensure longevity back in the 50s and 60s. I cut one into pieces and they are definitely not just gold plated.

So I guess I should stick with my 4% gold weight content which would be like 65 grams or some such right now...but after the refining process how much less gold would that be?

 

[rickzeien]

Read Hoke and do all the aquantence test. During that process you will get a fair Idea of the processes to refine and if you want to proceed.

After that read the forum sections on waste handling so you are prepared to safely process your waste.



Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[anachronism]

So I guess I should stick with my 4% gold weight content which would be like 65 grams or some such right now...but after the refining process how much less gold would that be?

Sir I would really recommend that you suspend your assumptions until you've actually processed these.

 

[g_axelsson]

Never seen gold filled connectors, only gold plated.

Being a bit larger pins the ratio of area versus volume (weight) goes down.

You may wish as much as you want to, but in the end it will never be more gold than there is.

Göran

 

[kernels]

Haha, I knew that response was coming, all you guys doing this everyday are wrong because I read on the internet . . . :lol:

 

[anachronism]

Haha, I knew that response was coming, all you guys doing this everyday are wrong because I read on the internet . . . :lol:

Perversely- it's entirely possible that they are higher than 4g per Kg- but I won't say that out loud cos t'internet knows best. :lol: :lol:

 

[Shark]

My wild guess would be more in the lines of a .025% by weight. Even then I wouldn't bet a wooden nickle that I was even in the ball park. I haven't processed pins by themselves in about two years now.

Every person I know that was well off had one thing in common when ask for advice. the reply was always along the lines of.....You surround yourself with people who know more than you do and you let them teach you to do the job OR you pay them to do it for you.

This forum is free, here I consider myself surrounded by people who know more than me and that is after about 6 years of reading here.

 

[anachronism]

Every person I know that was well off had one thing in common when ask for advice. the reply was always along the lines of.....You surround yourself with people who know more than you do and you let them teach you to do the job OR you pay them to do it for you.

Absa 100% lutely!! The single best piece of advice on the forum. It never ceases to amaze me how people come on here (I don't necessarily mean this OP) ask questions then either think they know better, or get upset when someone tells them the reality of a situation. When in fact they should be soaking up knowledge like a sponge.

 

[nickvc]

I have to admit to been 100% in agreement with Jon’s comments both on the possible yield but also with his last post.
The truth is you will not know the yield until the pins are refined but I would recommend been more pessimistic than optimistic that way you may have a pleasant surprise rather than an unpleasant shock, all too many people expect far too high a yield from their material and accusations of theft or incompetence usually follow, if you really want to know the yield take a small sample and send them for assay, it won’t be cheap there in the US but you will have your answer.

 

[g_axelsson]

I totally agree!

I would not like to refine this lot, I would be accused of stealing even if I returned 100% of the gold. High expectations are the fastest way to a sour business deal.

Göran

 

[Nickperl]

AS far as actual experience goes, over the years I've processed three batches of mil-spec gold plated contacts (new). My yield was 1.25%. I didn't determine which were 30 micro or 50 micro or even 100 microinch gold plated, but all three batches yielded 1-1/4% (using butyl diglyme and oxalic acid) at (200, 400 and 600 grams starting weight). I don't know where I learned it was best to melt the pins and drop into water to ease the burden on the nitric phase, but that's what I've always done. I tried to find out if I learned that here but didn't find anything other than folks just dropping the pins into nitric/water. So that's my two cents.

 

[Lino1406]

What is meant by "ease the burden on the nitric phase" how? and why?

 

[lazersteve]

I know this is an old thread, but I have been away for a while and have something to add.

I would do the following:

1) weigh out 100 grams of the pins (preferably in the same ratio as the various sizes)

2) hit it all with a batch of poor man's AR until everything possible is dissolved.

3) Neutralize the excess nitric with sulfamic acid

4) coarse filter out the insoluble chlorides and trash.

5) Fine filter the solution until transparent.

6) Precipitate with SMB.

7) Repeat entire process on the resulting Au for highest purity.

8) melt and weigh resulting Au

Yield in grams is the approximate percentage of Au present (there are always losses).

100 gram sample won't take long using the above technique and gives the OP a decent idea of what he has in Au content if care is taken.

There are fancier and/or cleaner methods, but the above will suffice for the purpose of estimating value present with proper technique.

Note: Failing to take a representative sample of the entire cross section of pin types can skew these results up or down. Testing only the smallest pins will give a higher result than testing a batch made up of purely the largest pins.

Steve

 

[etack]

Hi Steve hope all is well

Eric

 

[kernels]

That's basically my approach to "assay" something, although, I just usually dissolve the 100g sample straight in AR, cement onto Copper since I've probably overdone the Nitric, then re-refine with more care to get the yield.

I did this recently on some plated wire-wrap bus bars, the 100g test sample returned a yield of 11g/kg, when I ran 1kg of the material I actually ended up with closer to 14g/kg. So your losses are always magnified with small quantities.