Refining gold and retaining remaining alloy.

[Lara.hirst]

Hello,

I’m not entirely sure if I am posting this in the right area of the forum, but I hope someone might be able to help.

I am wanting to retrieve the pure gold from a 9 karat gold wedding band, while retaining and retrieving the remaining alloy of copper, silver and nickel. I Am currently waiting on an assay report to confirm the exact quantities of these metals present in the ring.

I do not want to add or loose any metal to or from the original ring, but extract and reuse what is already present.

Can this be done and if so how might I go about this?
Any help would be so very much appreciated

Kindest regards and many thank in advance,

Lara Hirst

 

[butcher]

You can recover gold, silver, and copper, from the ring, but metals like nickel, or the more reactive metals will not be as easy to recover.
after recovery, the gold can be refined through chemical means while the silver and copper can be refined by electrolysis.

How?

I would begin my study with Hoke's Book and the safety section learning to learn how to safely work with deadly toxic and dangerous chemicals reactions, and learn to safely deal with waste hazardous waste.

Getting the gold and silver is the easy part, the hard part is learning to do it without harming yourself or poisoning your family and everyone around you by contaminating your environment or your drinking water...

 

[jarlowski1]

Butcher is right you need to stop and take a moment to learn how to refine safely. It is not an easy thing to do and I would suggest you put that ring aside and start with something else since the ring seems to be important to you. I wouldn't want you to make a mistake and lose or complicate your refining of your ring. All the information you need is here. Like Butcher mentioned the metals can be reclaimed but don't be in a hurry to do so. I would start with gold fingers when you are ready they are easy and will allow you to somewhat learn how recovery and refining is done. You may have to spend a little money to learn the process but you will be glad you did when you are able to finally be confident enough to take and refine you ring. Good luck

 

[rickzeien]

Do you want each metal recovered separately?

Or

Are you going to reuse it as an alloy as it is now?

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[nickvc]

There are jewellers who can simply melt and reuse the present alloy and make it into something else, to refine all the metals present would simply be beyond an amateurs ability and would require some expense to achieve safely.