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Not sure how common they are where you live but we have a portable pump sold at bait and tackle shops that use batteries. It is to aerate live wells and minnow buckets. Replace the short hose with a longer one to keep the pump away from any fumes. I use the blue bubble stones sold at wal-mart.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/AERATOR-MARINE-METAL-BUBBLE-LIVE-WELL-AIR-PUMP-FOR-BAIT-4-MINNOW-B-11-/310728586079?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4858ddf35f
 
How long do the blue stones typically last when used for the AP process? I haven't had much luck with the black stones sold at a local garden supply shop. Now I use a piece of quarter inch diameter poly tubing that I wrapped a strip of 1 micron nylon filter (from a bag filter) around the end of the tubing that sits in the AP. I doesn't give me the fine bubbles I remember the stones first produced, but it seems to hold up fairly well.
 
I normally get about twenty pounds of pins dissolved before the oxides clog it up. A good soak in ammonium hydroxide will remove the oxides though. A little trick I discovered by accident. Rinse well before placing back in AP.
 
Ha! Geo I've just bought a pair of these on your recommendation 8) 8)

Great idea mate.

Jon
 
scranney said:
Yeah. I geuss I am learning a lot.
the lid I put on is just a loose fiting lid sitting on top.
seems like very tiny specks of gold in the solution today. Not full foils just specks and some whiteish some yellowish/broen salt? spots up the wall of the bucket.
I geuss it is just working really slow. I try and airate it a few times a day.
Click to expand...
If you have specks of gold as you said and not full gold flakes, then you most likely dissolved some of your gold. With that said, you should first take out all the board pieces that you know are fully stripped of the gold or wait it out until all of the pieces are stripped. And just so you'll know, those specs will probably be dissolved too in a matter of time if it stays in the solution, with or without a bubbler. That's because there was too much peroxide in the solution.

Still, after everything is said and done, place a piece of clean copper pipe in the solution, and if the pipe starts to form a brownish/dark brown sludge on it, then that should be your gold.

To make sure you gather all or much of the gold effectively, pour the solution into a glass breaker first, then add the copper pipe or bar. Do not use plastic for this procedure. Be prepared to let it site for a few days possibly. Make sure to stir the solution every hour or so to keep the solution active enough to attract the gold to the copper. Don't consider all the gold recovered by just sticking in the copper. You need to have a bubbler or stir the solution as described earlier.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks. I will do that. The solution is working very slow. It is day 5 and just has a few foils in it. How much gold do you think is in the solution?
 
I have had a static fingers batch sitting for about two weeks and it's just getting black a few days ago. But I didn't use any H2O2, just maybe 50% of old AP.
By static, I mean without a bubbler, just sitting there.

How much gold do you think is in the solution?
Click to expand...
So since yours turned almost black in just a few hours, my guess is "potentially a fair bit". But how long is a piece of string?

If you recover your gold, by cementing it out as fine blacking powder with copper as described above, you will need to test your remaining solution with Stannous Chloride to determine whether you have removed it all from solution.

But if you don't want to cement it all out now, that's ok. Keep your old copper and/or gold loaded AP. You can reuse it in future batches and never need add peroxide again.
 
So after 1 week all of the gold has come away from the fingers. I just lifted the inside bucket up and down a few times a day to get oxygen into the solution. Maybe not as good as a bubbler but it worked.
After filtering the ap solution into a bottle for later I noticed there was a hole in the filter papper and the ap solution has lots of gold specks suspendid in it with a few foils on the bottom. I thought I will just collect them all later when I cement the disolved gold out.
But I managed to get approx 2 teaspoons of gold foils is that low for 600g of fingers? I dont really know but I have made mistakes learnt a lot and am just proud to have some as a result. Next step is to recover the lost gold.
Thanks for all of your help and advice everyone here is a pic of what you helped me acheive.
 

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My gut feeling is that it is not a bad yield, though you're working with more material than I have. It will vary of course, depending on the origin of those 600g fingers and how closely they were trimmed. There's no fixed figure.

Now remember, what you now have in foils is probably about 30-40% gold by weight.
 
Drying your foils and weighing them is probably a good idea too. Record everything. After all, the only yield that matters is your own.
If you choose to recover any dissolved gold now, I'd do that before refining your foils. Then you can put them all together into HCl/Cl, assuming that's your chosen plan.
 
So I made some stanus chloride and tested the ap solution. It is a light brown colour. So I did disolve some of my gold. But as it is only a light brown that means there is only a little gold right? I will just leave it for now if it is only a little bit.
 
Weeeell, I would be looking more for purple than brown. Refer to point #10 here. http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=562

There's a also a possibility that all the nickel, copper et al has cemented your gold down as brown powder. Or that you never dissolved much gold in the first place. Or that your stannous is not working. Being a positive-only test, you really need to test that it can test a positive. That will require gold in solution.

You could make some gold solution by sacrificing a few foils in a couple of drops of HCl and adding a single drop of bleach. Let it sit a while, or heat it gently, to expel chlorine and you have some test gold in solution. It's always good to keep a small bottle of gold solution on hand for testing your stannous chloride is still working, as the latter goes off in just a couple of weeks.
 
Stannous chloride will precipitate a small amount of copper in a saturated solution like AP. Brown is a false positive.

Stannous chloride will detect minute amounts of gold in solution. If you suspect that there is gold in a solution that is saturated with copper, dilute a sample of the solution with HCl and test that sample. Don't trust the initial reaction but let it sit a couple of hours and dump the sample in the sample container and check the stain left behind. If gold was present, it will leave a purple stain behind. This is the reason I quit using Q-tips and bought a spot plate though white plastic spoons will work in a pinch.
 
I use a white paper towel. Dilute a small sample of the AR with distilled water 3 to 1, put a drop on the paper towel, then next to it place a drop of stannous chloride. Not on top of each other but close enough that the drops run together. Where they meet will turn dark purple/black IF you have gold in the AR.


Edit; correct spelling.
 
I made a small gold solution with a couple of foils and hcl with bleach. It went dark purple/black With the stanus chloride. Tried the ap solution again and it just stayed the blue/green colour.
by the way my stanus chloride is a light purple. I was watching your videos geo and you said it shloud be clear. I just used Solder in hcl warmed it under a candle until it fizzed then left it over night. The following day it is a light purple. Could that just be the silver In the solder?
 
scranney said:
I made a small gold solution with a couple of foils and hcl with bleach. It went dark purple/black With the stanus chloride. Tried the ap solution again and it just stayed the blue/green colour.
by the way my stanus chloride is a light purple. I was watching your videos geo and you said it shloud be clear. I just used Solder in hcl warmed it under a candle until it fizzed then left it over night. The following day it is a light purple. Could that just be the silver In the solder?
Click to expand...

I doubt it because even though silver can look purple using stannous chloride, it would have to dissolve first. HCl does not dissolve enough silver to color the solution in my opinion. I could be wrong and someone else can give a better answer. There are several different metals that can look purple as a colloid. Any combination of red and blue. You really should use stannous chloride that isn't already purple. :lol:
 
My first stannous was an odd colour, a very pale purple IIRC. There's a photo in one of my early posts. But you said you had a dark purple/black reaction with the gold solution, which is what you're after with gold solution. If I understand you correctly, you've positively confirmed your stannous chloride is working. Thumbs up!
The fact that it's not reacting with your AP now suggests it is likely negative for gold. Or at least not very much if any. That is a result consistent with it sitting on foils for a week.
 
Do you think that it is a pale purple because of the acid I used the stuff from bunnings. Or from the solder?
it sounds like I have exactly the same colour stanus chloride, pale purple. But the main thing is as long as it works.
 
If your source HCL was colored with those "low fuming" buffering additives that could explain the color of you test solution. But as long as it works.
 

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