Non-Chemical plzzzzzz help me

[goldpete]

ok i tried making a video but my camera decided it no longer wants to work. so here is an update.
i have now been doing everything by the book . i have been adding sulfuric acid and evaprating as mentioned in hokes book.
i believe i have finally recovered gold . but i wont know till i try to melt it . what i have so far is a completely clear liquid that just looks like water, with a dark sediment that just looks like very fine sand or dust. i only have a small amount because im working with small batches at a time.
so it seems im finally getting somewhere .
but im still having problems with stannous cholride testing solution . ill try and explain EXACTLY what ive done and i would love people opinions and help.

in a small 100ml bottle i put 75mls of water
then i put 1.5 grams of stannous chloride crystals
also 1.5 grams of tin granules
and 30 drops of hcl acid

i have shaken it and used it with an eye dropper on tissue paper on some solution and again i got no result.

now i know there was gold because ..............(1) i could see it sparkling like there was no tomorrow
(2) i used 5 small batches of nitric soaked connector pins and cell phone parts , all drained through the same coffee filter and rinsed thoroughly till only clear liquid came through before i soaked the filter and its contents in AR.

i used sulfuric acid and evaporated just as described in hokes book including adding hcl when the ar was reduced to a syrup.

as i said , i now have a totally clear liquid with fine dark sediment.

so can someone tell me why my stannous testing liquid still wont work .
i made the mix i just explained over a week ago and so far none of the tin granules have disolved

 

[butcher]

I would work on the stannous test.

Make up a small gold (standard)solution (test tube batch) using HCl/ bleach and some gold foils, heat to drive off chlorine gas,

Now take a small piece of 95% tin solder smash it very flat with a clean hammer on another clean metal surface, twist it to a curl and dissolve it in some HCl, to form your stannous chloride solution,

Now you can take your gold (standard) solution and test your stannous chloride solution.

You can also experiment a little , by diluting the solution and see what happens, or add a little oxidizer like bleach or chlorine to a few drops of your standard and test it with stannous, or add a drop or two of copper chloride solution, trying different things to see how they effect your tests can help you get more of an idea of results.

"now i know there was gold because ..............(1) i could see it sparkling like there was no tomorrow"

If you could see gold then it was not dissolved, and stannous will not test for it.
You will know when you have gold in dissolved solution, when the stannous chloride test is positive. If you suspect your stanous is not working you can test it against a known gold standard solution.

 

[goldpete]

I would work on the stannous test.

Make up a small gold (standard)solution (test tube batch) using HCl/ bleach and some gold foils, heat to drive off chlorine gas,

Now take a small piece of 95% tin solder smash it very flat with a clean hammer on another clean metal surface, twist it to a curl and dissolve it in some HCl, to form your stannous chloride solution,

Now you can take your gold (standard) solution and test your stannous chloride solution.

You can also experiment a little , by diluting the solution and see what happens, or add a little oxidizer like bleach or chlorine to a few drops of your standard and test it with stannous, or add a drop or two of copper chloride solution, trying different things to see how they effect your tests can help you get more of an idea of results.

"now i know there was gold because ..............(1) i could see it sparkling like there was no tomorrow"

If you could see gold then it was not dissolved, and stannous will not test for it.
You will know when you have gold in dissolved solution, when the stannous chloride test is positive. If you suspect your stanous is not working you can test it against a known gold standard solution.

i think you missunderstood what i was saying buddy.

i said i could see it sparkling and that was after i had soaked the starting material in nitric to remove base metals . i poured 5 batches of nitric soaked material through the same filter , and there was soooooooooo much gold vissible.
then i soaked that coffee filter in AR

 

[butcher]

That makes more sense, you had gold flakes after nitric but dissolved these in aqua regia, after removal of the nitric in the solution, is this when your stannous test would not work or after precipitating the gold?

If gold is in solution with nitric the stannous chloride test will not work or can show color for a brief period and then disappear.

if after you precipitated gold it is possible that that precipitant was all of the gold in solution and there is no more for the stannous test to detect.

Or something is wrong with your stannous chloride.

Doing the experiments with stannous chloride and the known gold solution ,also experimenting with other testing less than ideal solutions can help you determine what may be going on.
try a concentrated gold solution, then a very dilute solution, and so on, just spend some time getting acquainted with the stannous chloride test.

 

[TXWolfie]

Have a question about the use of the tin solder I bought some a while back does it matter if it has that string in it or not. I attempted to make Stannous the solder bubbled away and the string was inside.

Rich

 

[Geo]

Rich, ive used the same solder and it worked fine for me.

 

[TXWolfie]

okay thank you

 

[goldpete]

i tried to test my gold solution with the testing liquid i explained earlier , after the solution was heated to evaporate the nitric . i got no reaction , then i added smb to drop the gold and then tested the remaming solution to see if it still had gold and again i got no reation.

the stannous chloride crystals and the tin grabuals are all brand new from the supplier , so is the hcl acid and as u see by the way i mixed it , i made it as mentioned in hokes book .
and i have what looks like gold dust so i have no idea why i cant get stannous to work

 

[ericrm]

i tried to test my gold solution with the testing liquid i explained earlier , after the solution was heated to evaporate the nitric . i got no reaction , then i added smb to drop the gold and then tested the remaming solution to see if it still had gold and again i got no reation.

the stannous chloride crystals and the tin grabuals are all brand new from the supplier , so is the hcl acid and as u see by the way i mixed it , i made it as mentioned in hokes book .
and i have what looks like gold dust so i have no idea why i cant get stannous to work

do not use your powder ,use gold that your sure off...
do you still have gold flake ,your need very little. get the finger off from 2/3 pci card with nitric acid. than put those foil in the smallest beaker you have ,add a spoon of hcl and a spoon off bleach(maybe even less will be needed),it should be enuf to dissolve this little foil. your will have a solution to test your stannous chloride .

 

[goldpete]

i tried to test my gold solution with the testing liquid i explained earlier , after the solution was heated to evaporate the nitric . i got no reaction , then i added smb to drop the gold and then tested the remaming solution to see if it still had gold and again i got no reation.

the stannous chloride crystals and the tin grabuals are all brand new from the supplier , so is the hcl acid and as u see by the way i mixed it , i made it as mentioned in hokes book .
and i have what looks like gold dust so i have no idea why i cant get stannous to work

do not use your powder ,use gold that your sure off...
do you still have gold flake ,your need very little. get the finger off from 2/3 pci card with nitric acid. than put those foil in the smallest beaker you have ,add a spoon of hcl and a spoon off bleach(maybe even less will be needed),it should be enuf to dissolve this little foil. your will have a solution to test your stannous chloride .

if i diod that , wouldnt i need to evaporate offthe nitric ? (i dont have bleach , i use nitric in my AR)
and how do i evaporate such a small quantity ?

 

[ericrm]

lol ,go to the market and buy a gallon of clorox(javel) it is woth 2 box , and it will be very well spend :lol:

if you realy cant find clorox(javel) :shock: well ,add your nitric by the drop(literaly),until your gold has disolve(heat your solution to make sure you dont add too much nitric acid and you will not have to denox ....

 

[goldpete]

lol ,go to the market and buy a gallon of clorox(javel) it is woth 2 box , and it will be very well spend :lol:

if you realy cant find clorox(javel) :shock: well ,add your nitric by the drop(literaly),until your gold has disolve(heat your solution to make sure you dont add too much nitric acid and you will not have to denox ....

i have a link from a 9crt bracelet when it broke , ive kept the broken link . could u use that or do you recomend i pick out some gold leaf from the nitric soaked curcuit boards

 

[butcher]

goldpete,
Make your standard solution for testing your stannous with as pure gold as you can get, it would not take much gold, to make a small bottle of solution to test your stannous solution with (as you only need a drop for each test), I would not use gold from a circuit board unless it was free of solder (tin), finger foils would work if you were careful to clip them clean (to keep any solder or tin out of solution), then you could remove copper from these with HNO3, the 9 karat link could also be used but for this I would in-quarter it with silver before dissolving out the silver and copper with nitric acid to separate the gold.

The reason the members are trying to get you to use bleach with your HCl to dissolve your gold for your standard testing solution is that chlorine gas is much easier to remove from solution than the nitric acid is, you can use nitric but it is a little harder to deal with.

If you do use nitric and HCl to make your standard solution try this, use the gold you got from the process of parting the gold from base metals with nitric acid (we discussed above), give this gold a boil in water let it settle and decant water while still hot, take a (portion) of this gold powder add HCl to cover powder heat the solution, after heating add a drop of HNO3 continue to heat, some gold will go into solution, if all of the gold is dissolved you can add more gold, the idea here is to get gold into solution but we also want to have some gold left un-dissolved when we are done (as long as we have excess HCl) this way we will have gold in solution, and as long as we have gold powder left un-dissolved, then we have no free nitric acid remaining in solution, so after concentrating this solution some we can dilute it (to precipitate any silver that followed through to this point), let this sit overnight then decant and filter this gold solution into a small bottle, try a drop of this gold solution on a filter paper with a drop of your freshly made stannous chloride solution, if you get a pretty violet reaction, then both your standard gold solution and your stannous chloride are good.

 

[trashmaster]

when you make your stannous .... Post edited I was wrong sorry.

 

[goldsilverpro]

when you make your stannous DO NOT USE WATER :::::no where does hoke say use water...;;;;

Ms. Hoke certainly does say to use water - page 93 - 1.55g stannous chloride + about 25ml tap water + 25-30 drops HCl. Then she adds some tin metal (< 1oz) which dissolves very slowly and increases the shelf life.

I usually used about 1g stannous chloride, about 20ml water, and about 10ml HCl. Worked great. In my experience, exact ratios of these three things aren't that important. I think Ms. Hoke used much less HCl to prevent the tin metal she added to the solution from dissolving too rapidly, which would reduce the shelf life.

For years, I simply put a drop of the unknown solution on a piece of torn-off filter filter, then added a couple of stannous chloride crystals from the tip of my pocket knife, and, finally a drop of water. When gold and PGMs were present, they formed different colored rings on the paper. Sort of like paper chromatography. This works best with filter paper that doesn't absorb and spread the liquid too quickly. Coffee filters don't work well at all for this.

 

[trashmaster]

I stand corrected ,,, I will edit my post.

 

[awbrew]

Seriously you got love this Forum, If you've been here a while and read the postings that are the same Mistakes/Questions and what seems that one hasn't read Hoke. These guys still give it their best to explain, once again.
What they have already said or answered in over 100 post a each. Thanks Geo, Butcher, Palladium, Harold and so many other that contribute. Kind of makes your wonder if there isn't a little pile of hair beside their coffee and keyboard!!!