Separating large melts

[wywiwyg2000]

Hello again,
I have enjoyed and read twice so far (C.M.Hokes) book. Before I was humbled by the reading, I melted a lot of gold together thinking the wasted would burn off. I have globs of 2-3 oz each. (My question) Do I use the same process for separating the precious metals with the HN03.? Or, I think the reading says to make small drops "from filing", which I have started. They are BB size and smaller. They contain 10k, 12k 14k, 10k rolled gold and 14k filled. None of the chunks are the thin plating.

 

[Oz]

Study inquartation of gold with silver in Hokes and on the forum.

 

[rusty]

Hello again,
I have enjoyed and read twice so far (C.M.Hokes) book. Before I was humbled by the reading, I melted a lot of gold together thinking the wasted would burn off. I have globs of 2-3 oz each. (My question) Do I use the same process for separating the precious metals with the HN03.? Or, I think the reading says to make small drops "from filing", which I have started. They are BB size and smaller. They contain 10k, 12k 14k, 10k rolled gold and 14k filled. None of the chunks are the thin plating.

Page 74 Hoke.

You are already familiar with the idea of inquartation, or adding enough silver, copper, or brass, to reduce the gold content to 25% or less. This is the usual plan when green gold is refined.

The other alternative, of melting it up with some metal that will make it soluble in aqua regia, is not so popular, but the student should understand it.

A button that contains more than 12% silver is very slow to dissolve in aqua regia. With silver as low as 8%, aqua regia works readily enough, especially if hot. (We are assuming that the other constituents are metals that are themselves soluble in aqua regia, such as gold, copper, zinc, or nickel.

We can easily imagine a situation wherein a jeweler might have on hand a little green gold, and considerable yellow gold, red gold, or fine gold. By melting all these together he would obtain a button of less than 12% silver, that would dissolve in aqua regia, and that could be refined by familiar methods.