Preparing for Christmas

[Martijn]

Getting ready for some quality time with family and friends.
The aquarium and table/couch corner is draped with a christmas village. The tree is full of decoration, presents and chocholats.


My wife has worked hard for days in the kitchen preparing her famous stew and stewed pears for the feast meal.
It has become such a tasty tradition that the kids now expect it to be served at Christmas.
Tomorrow presents around the tree with our first nine month old grandson. I can't wait!

Time off, relaxing, playing some guitar, .... you might get bored.. so I always like to use these days to process a (for me) bigger batch of gold plated watches and other plated stuff.
I just don't have the time to watch over a process during several days as I can now. I prefer to finish and bottle the used acid as fast as possible to keep the moist from the air out.
Plus the low temperature outside helps keeping the acid cool.
So I prepared the lab, treated my waste, evaporated solutions to make room and made new copper rods to insert in the cell.
Got it all washed in the ultrasonic cleaner And dried, ready to strip.

I processed some old partially stripped parts from previous batches first in some used sulfuric and now started up the first bigger 1 liter cell with fresh acid. It's purring along, limited at 3 Amps. Second bigger cell will be set up in two days.
I have a few days of occasionally refilling a cell, washing and sorting the stripped items to reprocess and enjoying the time at home.
Januari will be for refining the slimes.
I'm sure many other fellow hobby refiners are working on some type of project with a couple of extra days off.
Have fun and be safe if you do. May your yields be sparkling and abundant.

Merry Christmas to you all!

 

[Martijn]

 

[BGDOCK]

Did you make some of those houses ?
That plated scrap is so impressive .
Happy holidays bro

 

[Martijn]

Did you make some of those houses ?
That plated scrap is so impressive .
Happy holidays bro

No they are bought. We made the gray base with polystyrene and cement.

 

[Shark]

Oddly I have done just the opposite. I have brought everything to halt and will spend a few days just hanging out with family. We have a new grand daughter as well and she is just over three months old. I need the extra time to spoil her since I don't do it enough as it is.

Wishing you and the family all the best for the holidays.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Oddly I have done just the opposite. I have brought everything to halt and will spend a few days just hanging out with family. We have a new grand daughter as well and she is just over three months old. I need the extra time to spoil her since I don't do it enough as it is.

Wishing you and the family all the best for the holidays.

These small ones are worth more than any Gold.
Enjoy the time mate.

 

[Shark]

Literally just found out we are expecting another great grandchild. Merry Christmas to me!

 

[Martijn]

Literally just found out we are expecting another great grandchild. Merry Christmas to me!

Congratulations!!

 

[goldshark]

Getting ready for some quality time with family and friends.
The aquarium and table/couch corner is draped with a christmas village. The tree is full of decoration, presents and chocholats.
View attachment 66253
View attachment 66255
My wife has worked hard for days in the kitchen preparing her famous stew and stewed pears for the feast meal.
It has become such a tasty tradition that the kids now expect it to be served at Christmas.
Tomorrow presents around the tree with our first nine month old grandson. I can't wait!

Time off, relaxing, playing some guitar, .... you might get bored.. so I always like to use these days to process a (for me) bigger batch of gold plated watches and other plated stuff.
I just don't have the time to watch over a process during several days as I can now. I prefer to finish and bottle the used acid as fast as possible to keep the moist from the air out.
Plus the low temperature outside helps keeping the acid cool.
So I prepared the lab, treated my waste, evaporated solutions to make room and made new copper rods to insert in the cell.
Got it all washed in the ultrasonic cleaner And dried, ready to strip.
View attachment 66254
I processed some old partially stripped parts from previous batches first in some used sulfuric and now started up the first bigger 1 liter cell with fresh acid. It's purring along, limited at 3 Amps. Second bigger cell will be set up in two days.
I have a few days of occasionally refilling a cell, washing and sorting the stripped items to reprocess and enjoying the time at home.
Januari will be for refining the slimes.
I'm sure many other fellow hobby refiners are working on some type of project with a couple of extra days off.
Have fun and be safe if you do. May your yields be sparkling and abundant.

Merry Christmas to you all!

An open door to an electric furnace, makes a good make shift manger, but only in an emergency.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Oh, you young pups just having grandkids... Enjoy them while you can! We just completed our annual Christmas Eve with the family. Our youngest grandson is 19 and a freshman in college. Our older is living his best life in Colorado. We passed the phone around to everyone to talk to him. Enjoy them while you can!!! Because tomorrow, they'll be grown.

Best wishes to everyone!

Dave

 

[Martijn]

And then you find a Christmas present!
Solid karat gold watch case slowly dissolving.
Maybe one more..

 

[Martijn]

Christmas present just came in!

No more fooling around with weak acids.

 

[4metals]

Nice chemistry set. Be careful and please share photos of some of your setups. Happy New Year.

 

[Martijn]

Nice chemistry set. Be careful and please share photos of some of your setups. Happy New Year.

Thanks. I have been looking for a nice one for some time. I had doubts about he ones from china. This one is from Steinberger. But probably made in china as well. I will share pictures of it working.
Distilling water will be my first trial run to get a feeling for this beauty.
I have distilled other things before, but that was in a copper still

First i have a cup of black sulfuric goo to wash and refine.
Good times.

 

[4metals]

Did you get a heating mantle for the spherical flask? They are much more efficient than a hot plate. Hot plates are fine when heating a flat bottom vessel but I don’t see an Erlenmeyer flask in the set.

 

[Martijn]

Did you get a heating mantle for the spherical flask? They are much more efficient than a hot plate. Hot plates are fine when heating a flat bottom vessel but I don’t see an Erlenmeyer flask in the set.

I will be using a corningware dish with fine sand to support and distribute the heat. On a hotplate. And I could put a lift table underneath the hotplate with the flask in a clamp.
I have some erlenmyers, and a flat bottom round flask, I had a volcano eruption once from nitric on dirty powder, but I might give it another try, now that i have more experience.

 

[4metals]

I have lead a spoiled existence as a refiner, all but 1 time I purchased the best equipment for the task. That one time I used a sand dish to support a 22 liter round bottom flask for a reaction. To this day I am not sure why but the vessel ruptured and it's contents ended up in the sand. And, as luck would have it, all of the gold dissolved and only diamonds remained in the reaction. I ended up sifting the sand for the diamonds and mixing hydrazine into the sand to reduce the gold chloride to metal before incinerating it, crushing it, and assaying it as a sweep. I did recover all of the expected gold. In the many years since, I have never had a vessel in a proper heating mantle fail.

So in my book, which might be titled "A privileged, spoiled, refiners guide to refining" you would never read about sand dishes for heating round bottom flasks. Of course there would be no chapters on AP or poor mans aqua regia either!

 

[eaglekeeper]

I have distilled other things before, but that was in a copper still

Same principle.... just without the Thumper.


Do you have a way of measuring the temp, thermometer well...etc. Glad to see you picked a Liebig condenser, especially if you are going to use it to distill from dry reagents. Liebig condenser can clog up in the right conditions, but Grahm condensers are the worst when using dry reagents. Even though I now use a Liebig condenser, I still leave the sealed (with Teflon tape or sulfuric) thermometer well without a KecK clip... just encase of a clog in the condenser.

Try to disassemble the joints while it's still a little hot, otherwise you risk the joints seizing together once it cools down.

I've never used a reflux column when making nitric, so I can't comment on how effective they are. I would think that the higher the still head the hotter you need to get it to drive the vapor front to the top.... therefore, decomposing more of the nitric. But I could very well be wrong on that thought.

Nice setup....

 

[Acidrain]

I have lead a spoiled existence as a refiner, all but 1 time I purchased the best equipment for the task. That one time I used a sand dish to support a 22 liter round bottom flask for a reaction. To this day I am not sure why but the vessel ruptured and it's contents ended up in the sand. And, as luck would have it, all of the gold dissolved and only diamonds remained in the reaction. I ended up sifting the sand for the diamonds and mixing hydrazine into the sand to reduce the gold chloride to metal before incinerating it, crushing it, and assaying it as a sweep. I did recover all of the expected gold. In the many years since, I have never had a vessel in a proper heating mantle fail.

So in my book, which might be titled "A privileged, spoiled, refiners guide to refining" you would never read about sand dishes for heating round bottom flasks. Of course there would be no chapters on AP or poor mans aqua regia either!

22L! Wow that's a large flask! I thought my 5L was big

 

[4metals]

22L! Wow that's a large flask!

22 liter is the biggest you can lift and pour by hand, the next sizes up, 50L, 72L and 100L are the ones too big to pick up and require special equipment to drain.