refining gold plated and gold filled jewlery

[hiscomm]

Hi:

Another question on gold plated junk jewerly. I looked at a tutorial at Gold N Scrap that Sam produced on inquarting. I noticed at the end of the process all the Karat gold was dissolved, only a small amount of granules was left. If I am just doing plated material, should I not only be interested in removing the gold plate and not attempting to dissolve down to nothing the other base metals? Being that the karat Jewelery is solid and you need to dissolve all of it to get all the noble metal in it? I've been exstrapulating from different videos and reading and trying to understand the techniques as a beginner. Look forward to hearing your council on this thanx.

 

[GotTheBug]

Look up sulfuric stripping cell in the search bar.

 

[joubjonn]

Plated jewelry would have to be run with a stripping reverse plating cell.

Otherwise your gonna waste a ton of good acid on very very little gold. Plated jewelry I think is usually even thinner plating compared to gold plated electrical contacts. Only gold filled should be dissolved or karat gold. Inquarting and karat gold is not the same as gold filled, gold plated as the material has different quantities of gold. The process will change depending on amount and type of base metal.

The reverse plating cell works very nicely for plated objects. Before you go and start buying supplies read and research how it works and pay attention to the safety concerns of concentrated sulfuric acid, specifically hot conc. sulfuric acid. Nasty stuff. It will eat you alive if it touches your skin.