bhilton
Well-known member
Ooops, I started the nitric boils an hour ago. Since they had one side that wasn't reacting, I kept them in the batch.Sounds like it. What kind of "pieces"? Picture?
Ooops, I started the nitric boils an hour ago. Since they had one side that wasn't reacting, I kept them in the batch.Sounds like it. What kind of "pieces"? Picture?
So 1 minute may be a "long" time for a reaction with straight nitric. I would not discount it could be old unmarked RGP, low karat GF or HGE.
This is where the test acid helps, 10k/14k
Gold plate should react quickly with straight nitric, in seconds, because it's so thin.
I would keep these and run separately and see the yield.
But 1 min (even with 10k acid) tells me it should be worth it.
If it reacts in seconds then put it in the plated pile.
I’ve done a similar test on items that took awhile to bubble. Overall the yield was not great, much less than 1% vs true gold filled. AP is the way to go with them as there is a lot of base metal vs recovered values. I ran mine in nitric, it used a lot of acid and so much base metal was exposed so quickly, boil overs were a constant concern. Anymore I just save them with the HGE items and will deal with them when I get a bucketful.Ok my nitric is 58% and I just did another drop test with 50/50 diluted (1 part 58% nitric and 1 part distilled water) and the watch piece which I had sorted as gold plated already took about 15 seconds to display bubbles and green. I think maybe I will go through all those that I set aside and separate the ones that react fast vs ones that take a bit longer. Maybe run the ones that took a bit longer just to see what they yield. Is that kind of what you would do?
Enter your email address to join: