Refining Gold Jewelry for a beginner

[Ronaldf]

Good afternoon,

I have roughly 10 ounces of scrap gold (10k and 14k Jewelry) that I am wanting to refine and smelt into ingots. I have my first furnace kit coming in and while I was waiting I started looking into what I need to do for the refining.

Is the only way to refine 10k, 14k, etc back into 24k gold my using acids? With the right flux, can the same process be done during the smelt? I would rather stay away from acids and refine during the smelt if that is possible.

 

[jeneje]

To obtain high purity gold you will need to process the material chemically. Welcome to the forum. Before doing anything download CM Hoke book and search Harold_V posts. You will find a lot of great information on how to process gold jewelry.

Ken

 

[FrugalRefiner]

I'm afraid smelting is a recovery process, not a refining process. Smelting is great for separating metals from non metals, but it's not a practical way to separate gold from everything else it might be alloyed with. Acids are the only practical way to refine small quantities. The book in my signature line was written specifically for jewelers who wanted to refine their own jewelry scrap.

Dave

 

[Ronaldf]

Thank you all for the replies! I will definitely have a look at that book.