Recovering gold from gold plater copper talk bars

[Anonymous]

I have some glod plated copper talk bars from an old AE private phone system.what is the best way to recover the gold.

 

[lazersteve]

Welcome to the forum,

The reverse plating cell works great on large gold plated items.


Steve

 

[goldsilverpro]

It would be nice to see a photo, since your description was very incomplete.

I may know what you're talking about, but don't know exactly how to describe them. I think, however, that the parts I am thinking of were used in the phone switching stations. I saw them in scrap mainly in the late '80's. The ones I am thinking of are sticks of copper, maybe 18"-24" long, with a rectangular cross section about 1/4" wide. There are a number of sections, each about 1" long or so, along the length, that are gold plated. If this is what you have, the gold is plated very, very thick. It may be some of the thickest gold plating I have ever seen.

I agree with Steve that the sulfuric cell would be the best way to deplate them, assuming we're talking about the same thing.

 

[Noxx]

My opinion is, if you have really thick plating, you better go with AR. Unless there is a lot of base metals under the plating.
But both techniques will do the trick

 

[Harold_V]

My opinion is, if you have really thick plating, you better go with AR. Unless there is a lot of base metals under the plating.
But both techniques will do the trick

You have much to learn, grasshopper.

Harold