Nubby needs help please??

[digger25]

I bought Steve's video and processed a batch, but when I melted down my precipitation it turned into a red glass type substance!! Any advise would really help?I've tested the solution and it shows no gold in it!
Have I lost my gold?
Can I rerefine this red glass to recover the gold?
I'm now reading everything I can find on Ap process before moving forward again.
Thanks digger25!

 

[butcher]

digger25,
If you can give a little more details about what you have done so far and how you have got to this point, maybe we can help you figure out what is going on.

Without knowing the details I suspect you had copper chloride in the melt

 

[digger25]

digger25,
If you can give a little more details about what you have done so far and how you have got to this point, maybe we can help you figure out what is going on.

Without knowing the details I suspect you had copper chloride in the melt.

The HCl,cl had a slightly green tint, which I thought was just the green computer board that was in my gold. I filtered the HCl , cl to remove the green board before precipitation. The precipitated material was a greyish brown color when dried.
The HCl, cl is a root beer color now after my precipitation.

 

[Pantherlikher]

digger25...
Have you tested to see where your gold is?..
What did you start with? What was done so far...

Did you do some reading and studying before even attempting anything?

Just buying a video dos not mean you are ready to do anything...

You should be able to tell us where your gold is hiding and how to get it out.

Asking about the red is a good question. But you need to learn before you try to dive in and do anything.

B.S.
...Start at the welcome section first...

 

[torscot]

Computer boards are not my specialty, but, I've worked with gold recovery on a hobby scale. You mention " the green computer board " in singular form twice, If you only used one board, you may collected the gold from it. But there's so little it won't be visible to the naked eye. You're talking milligrams of gold, or less! from one board. There are some good posts on here about how much is recovered from what types of scrap. It's going to take more than one board even to practice the processes. Good luck, it's a great hobby. As someone else said, read, read, and read some more .

 

[digger25]

Computer boards are not my specialty, but, I've worked with gold recovery on a hobby scale. You mention " the green computer board " in singular form twice, If you only used one board, you may collected the gold from it. But there's so little it won't be visible to the naked eye. You're talking milligrams of gold, or less! from one board. There are some good posts on here about how much is recovered from what types of scrap. It's going to take more than one board even to practice the processes. Good luck, it's a great hobby. As someone else said, read, read, and read some more .

I used 2 lbs of gold covered edges ( both sides) cut down to just the gold on the edge of the boards .I used the ap process to lift the gold off the boards (2 lbs.)of it! So I'm sure there is a measurable amount of gold some where.I may not have cleaned the gold good enough to get all the copper chloride out of it.I then used the HCl and bleach mixture to dissolve the gold.it had a green tint to it.I then filtered the HCl, solution to remove the left over computer boards remains out of solution before using smb to precipitate the gold out.the precipitate was a greyish brown color when dried. I then used a small furnace with a 5 oz. Crucible to melt the stuff down and when cooled was a red glass type sustaince.

 

[necromancer]

did you use a flux mixture or just borax ?

if it was just borax you can smash off the borax glass and then use a hot 10% sulfruic solution to remove the remaining borax glass

(always ad sulfuric acid to water) never the reverse.

 

[butcher]

The HCl,cl had a slightly green tint, which I thought was just the green computer board that was in my gold. I filtered the HCl , cl to remove the green board before precipitation. The precipitated material was a greyish brown color when dried.
The HCl, cl is a root beer color now after my precipitation.

This is very little information for me to go with, but from what I see here, you may be doing something wrong.
It could be major problems in your process, or just small details your missing like washing procedures.

You are talking about using HCl and chlorine, in the same sentence of the green computer board (that was with your gold).
First was this gold foils recovered with the acid peroxide process?

If it was just a little solder mask along with your gold foils, did you clean the foils of the remaining copper or copper chloride before dissolving the gold foils in the HCl acid and bleach?

The gray green precipitate is a sign of salts, which could be of many forms, sodium chloride NaCl (white), copper chloride CuCl (white to green when dry), you could even have other salts involved from say of sulfates which can also be white (to green with copper),if you used too much SMB to precipitate the gold.

The Rootbeer looking solution could be a copper solution, or un-precipitated gold, or even a mixture of copper and colloidal gold (that your stannous may not be able to reduce).
What was the color of your gold solution before using SMB? Was it a nice clear yellow color before you added SMB? Was it green or brown?

Basically it sounds like you melted a bunch of salts with your gold, chloride salts which can make much of your gold go up in fumes of smoke from the melt.

Study more on the acid peroxide process, study more on the process of dissolving gold with HCl and bleach, pay attention to small details like washing the foils, or dissolving salts from your gold, and gold washing procedures before melting your gold...

Basically do a heck of a lot more study, there is more to recovery and refining than you can learn in a video, Hoke's book and the forum is a good start to learning.

Steve's video will make it seem real easy, and you could have good luck following his video, but unless you understand what is going on and why, and why and how each thing is done, or needs to be done, you can run into a lot of problems even with simple processes, simple little details, can make the difference in a gold button in your melting dish, or no gold in your dish after melting, and the condition of the gold when you do get it.

 

[butcher]

I used 2 lbs of gold covered edges ( both sides) cut down to just the gold on the edge of the boards .I used the ap process to lift the gold off the boards (2 lbs.)of it! So I'm sure there is a measurable amount of gold some where.I may not have cleaned the gold good enough to get all the copper chloride out of it.I then used the HCl and bleach mixture to dissolve the gold.it had a green tint to it.I then filtered the HCl, solution to remove the left over computer boards remains out of solution before using smb to precipitate the gold out.the precipitate was a greyish brown color when dried. I then used a small furnace with a 5 oz. Crucible to melt the stuff down and when cooled was a red glass type substance.

Here it does sound like you need more work on your washing procedures, washing after the acid peroxide process before dissolving the gold foils, and washing the gold after refining, (note you may also need to re-refine your gold after the first precipitation), basically you are missing a lot of fine details needed to get gold pure.

I do not know how much gold may be in your melted button, but you can refine it and see, it may not dissolve easily if it contains mostly gold, you may be able to use HCl/Cl if you can hammer or crush it thin, if not, you may need a stronger oxidizer, like HCl and nitric or poormans aqua regia

 

[Pantherlikher]

Almost every post so far fails to mention testing to find out where your gold is.

You also failed to properly wash the powder after AP so allot probably went up in smoke with other salts, whitish powder.
You also failed to state how you got rid of any unused chlorine before adding too much SMB, brown color now.
You also failed to "refine" your gold. "gathering" gold or collecting, concentrating, what ever is the act of ridding the gold from all base metals which AP "helps" to do. AP does not refine gold. It is only a tool to collect. concentrate it. You then use HCL and bleach to do the "first" refining. This removes more base metals. "Washing" the powders removes most of unwanted material from the gold powder. Do a search on "Washing powders" to learn how to "properly" do it.

Learning how to do what you want is the most important detail you need to do before you will do anything the right way for maximum gain.

Anything else is just a waste of forum space as you are not learning the entire process with all the details and tricks.

Please learn before doing anything else

B.S.

 

[bswartzwelder]

Did you ever test any solution with stannous chloride? Put everything aside and start reading. Just watching a video is not good enough. Any mistakes you have made, have been made by probably every member on this forum at one time or another.