Today's (crazy) refinement

[Alexander_Hun]

Hello!

I would like to present my weekend record refinement (my own record)
I started with 422 grams, there was a lot of white mud, in principle tin dioxide. I had to wash a lot before it almost disappeared, I boiled the reduced gold three times in distilled water.
The ph value went up to about 6-7, then I boiled it in hydrochloric acid (30%) and checked it so as not to lose gold. After that, I boiled it again in distilled water, then rinsed it again and melted it.
Its weight was suspicious to me before melting, I was hoping that it would be maybe 10 grams, when I saw how much I didn't want to believe.....
I have attached a picture of the connectors (besides those, there are only a few other little things in it)

 

[Alondro]

Those looks like very old high-grade contacts. Do you know if they were military or telecom? I've found some crazy thick plating on stuff from the 1970's from those sources. Some components were clearly dipped and not electroplated. The plating was so thick it held its shape after the copper was dissolved away and sank straight to the bottom after rough stirring for washes.

I'm almost ready to combine all my little batches of foils for my own full-scale refinement (full-scale in my case being enough foils to process in my 1L flask). One more batch to wash clean of salts, then it's time!

 

[Alexander_Hun]

Those looks like very old high-grade contacts. Do you know if they were military or telecom? I've found some crazy thick plating on stuff from the 1970's from those sources. Some components were clearly dipped and not electroplated. The plating was so thick it held its shape after the copper was dissolved away and sank straight to the bottom after rough stirring for washes.

I'm almost ready to combine all my little batches of foils for my own full-scale refinement (full-scale in my case being enough foils to process in my 1L flask). One more batch to wash clean of salts, then it's time!

Hi, it could be military, they also keep their shape, the gold plating stays in the same shape as the original contact...

 

[Shark]

Nice!

I ran some pins like that a while back, but I bought them so I a not sure what they came from. The person I got them from does get a lot of older telecom stuff though, and very little to no military stuff.

 

[Ohiogoldfever]

Man that worked out great. Nice recovery.

 

[nickvc]

Possibly from a Soviet source as I have found similar results for e scrap from that era and source.

 

[orvi]

Does you have the picture of writing/label on the connectors ?

Lots of old stuff was thick-plated. And these ones are very thin metal - so not too much dead weight. It is usually like this, when you have thick plate and thin metal.

Some potentiometers had contacts made of nickel/copper thin sheet metal, very small pieces, but they contained around 9-10% Au by weight. Some of them even 15%... And it was plated, not dipped.

Best pins I ever had were around 35-40g/kg in bulk mix. So you beat me congrats