What is the best way to recover the gold plating from a block of copper base metal

[Ohiogoldfever]

I wonder if you could scrape large amounts of material off the flat surfaces with a carbide scraper? It would open the surface and whatever could be scraped off could be cleaned up separately with far less effort.

In theory anyhow.

 

[Ag and Au]

Sounds great, but it will be very time consuming.

 

[Shark]

Palladium posted a stripping cell several years ago built with a tumbler. It might do the trick fairly inexpensive.

 

[Ag and Au]

Cool - I will find it. Thank you.

 

[Shark]

Page two of Phildreamers post “mild carbon steel sulfuric cell” make reference and has some similar pictures of the same basic setup. If nothing else I will try to find when I get home tonight.

I still don’t know how to copy paste links from my phone.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Here's a link to Philddreamer's thread Mild Carbon Steel Sulphuric Cell.

I believe it was firewalker who first posted about his tumber stripper cell. It was made with a 5 gallon bucket, PVC pipe, a rotisserie motor, all sitting in a large plastic tub. I think Palladium was aware of the design at the time as well. It might have originally been designed as a plating tumbler, and both firewalker and Palladium saw the value as a stripper. I think Palladium may have posted some pictures as well, and I think someone posted a PDF of a lot of good pictures. It was a nice design.

If anyone finds the threads or the PDF, please let me know. We wanted to clean up firewalker's thread to include in The Library, but the thread isn't as good without the pictures. Ralph, do you have them handy?

Dave

 

[Ag and Au]

Dave: Thank you for your diligence in helping me. I will absolutely check it out and let you know my results. Best.

 

[Shark]

I have a link at home to the original information that was posted I just need to be in my computer to pull it up.

Thanks Dave for posting Phil’s thread.

 

[Shark]

Here is the original link to the zinc plating system.

http://www.nulltime.com/zincplating/shop_setup/plating_barrel/index.html

 

[Shark]

Here are a few videos for reference as well. Keep in mind that all the links refer to plating various items and need to be taken into consideration if building one to allow for deplating our gold plated items. I do not know any of the people doing these, just somethings I bookmarked along time ago, just in case...











Bullet copper plating

 

[Shark]

Here is firewalkers original post, and it includes the nulltime link I posted above. Never can have to much information when trying to design or build things from scratch.

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/tumbler-cell.5092/

 

[Ag and Au]

Thank you guys. This looks awesome and sounds like a fun project. However, I am at the point in my life where I cannot devote the proper time and due diligence to such an endeavor. Can either of you guys do this for me for a reasonable price?

 

[Shark]

I am busy right now myself. I have taken to spending winter months doing other things. It isn’t hard putting one together but can be a bear trying to find some of the parts at reasonable prices. (I am pretty stingy though).

 

[Ag and Au]

Thank you Shark. ..... Seperate thought from using a deplating cell (but still regarding the recovery of gold plating from a block of copper base metal).....I would like to float this idea out there. If I cover the gold plated copper blocks with HCL, then add a few drops of bleach (or nitric)... could I dissolve just the gold and somehow end the reaction before it attacks the copper?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you Shark. ..... Seperate thought from using a deplating cell (but still regarding the recovery of gold plating from a block of copper base metal).....I would like to float this idea out there. If I cover the gold plated copper blocks with HCL, then add a few drops of bleach (or nitric)... could I dissolve just the gold and somehow end the reaction before it attacks the copper?

Any oxidizer strong enough for the Gold will be plenty strong enough for the Copper.
Additionally the dissolved Gold will plate\cement back on the Copper.
That is why we stress that when you start dissolving the Gold, ALL metal need to be dissolved.

 

[Ag and Au]

I was afraid you'd say that. Thank you, as always.

 

[stoneware]

I suppose the same way I remove the precious metals wash coat from foil converters - via electrolysis using a sulfuric electrolyte.

Foil as anode, undermine the wash coat.

In your case by removing the copper would leave the gold foils or cell slime to be collected.

You will have to score the gold plating in several areas.