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Lost treasures..... 8)

One of the resons I got involved in recovering PM's. Back bout 12 yrears ago my dad was heavy into yard sales and auctions. I dropped by his house one afternoon and he showed me a piece of metal. Roughly 2"x2"x3/8" gold plated, not shiney gold, dull gold, thick gold from what I have learned here on the forum. Well he had gotten the piece of metal from a guy that did salvage work and had a warehouse that he sold salvaged items out of. This guy had 8 gaylord boxes full of these.

I took the piece to a couple of jewlers and not of them would tell me anything about them. Now I know it was because they didn't know how to recover the PM's.

Well weeks later my dad told me that the boxes had found a buyer and that the returnon the PM's to the original guy was a cool $2,000,000.00. 8)

We could have bought all 8 boxes for $20,000.00. :evil:

How much do you think the refiner made??? :!:

Knowledge is power
 
Barren

Sounds like you had the pot o gold at the end of rainbow and did'nt know it.

I have been researching all of my gold recycle stuff with a magnet since most of you seem to want to stay away from it in the process.
Those gold covered I.C.'s in my previous pictures turned out to have steel or magnetic legs etc. along with some small pins I have.
So would you recommend dumping these or wait till I get some more experience.
As you remember I am another rookie.
I did get some very nice clean gold pins that will probably be my first attempt at all this.

Steve P.
 
kssurplus said:
Barren

Sounds like you had the pot o gold at the end of rainbow and did'nt know it.

I have been researching all of my gold recycle stuff with a magnet since most of you seem to want to stay away from it in the process.
Those gold covered I.C.'s in my previous pictures turned out to have steel or magnetic legs etc. along with some small pins I have.
So would you recommend dumping these or wait till I get some more experience.
As you remember I am another rookie.
I did get some very nice clean gold pins that will probably be my first attempt at all this.

Steve P.
Click to expand...

Gold plating is usually over a layer of nickel,and will be slightly magnetic if you are using a strong magnet.If it really jumps to the magnet you probably have steel,if it clings weakly it may just be the layer of nickel under the gold.Don't discount everything with a magnet.

Jim
 
Magnet

Ok I did see some were fairly strong and some were much weaker.

Well it's just when I do start I would not want to mess up to bad the first batch.
I also study Steve's video's a lot and try to digest as much as possible.
Thanks
 
Just do your homework so you know how to process what you have.And keep all your material sorted in lots of the same items.
Save up until you have enough of each type to process.That seems to be the newer members main mistake,by being impatient and throwing a bunch of mixed items together and getting a mess.You can't go wrong by saving up all the material you can get, while learning on the forum.

Jim
 
kssurplus said:
Barren

Sounds like you had the pot o gold at the end of rainbow and did'nt know it.

I have been researching all of my gold recycle stuff with a magnet since most of you seem to want to stay away from it in the process.
Those gold covered I.C.'s in my previous pictures turned out to have steel or magnetic legs etc. along with some small pins I have.
So would you recommend dumping these or wait till I get some more experience.
As you remember I am another rookie.
I did get some very nice clean gold pins that will probably be my first attempt at all this.

Steve P.
Click to expand...

We knew kind of what was there at the time we just didn't have the knowledge to bring it all together.

Seperate you magnetic from non magnetic. Have seperate batches that have solder and ones that don't you might want to try a cell at some point with clean material.

Don't dump anything. Keep it for your learning experience, Each lot you do will teach you important stuff till you do things 2nd nature without thinking.

Learn your processes and what they are supposed to do. Do different batches and find out what material has difficulties that you will run into. Just when you think you know what is going to happen a gremlin will come out and bite you in the ass. But that is how you learn. Don't be afraid to make mistakes because they are going to happen. It just what you do when they happen that determins what direction you will go.

And have paitence.

8)
 
That's kinda what I was thinkin to separate the different grades of purity.
I just about have all the stuff for a cell .
I have some 20kt small connectors but they have a drawback in that they had the mini coax cable cut off at the end of the connector.
I am not sure of the composition of the small amount of coax inside them.
What would be a good way to prepare them, maybe to torch them to burn off the unwanted junk and then recover the gold?
Well eventually we will solve these problems in our head first.
 
A proposition.

Since no one realy wants to post results or yields. I am willing to go out on a limb and see what can be complished.

I have roughly 150 pentium pro's coming in to process, along with aprox 1700 other ceramic cpu's. I'm willing to run tests for yields on this material and possibly put some myths to sleep. Ok stop laughing I can pull this off but I still have my dunce hat close :roll: .

For the pentium pros 3 processes
1. Cell & HCL/Clorox
2. HCL/Clorox
3. Peroxide/Nitric

Ceramic 2 processes
1. HCL/peroxide
2. Nitric

At the end if I can acomplish this I will have a guessing game with buttons posted. Exact weight must be guessed for all the forum to find the results possibly. Only one guess per person no matter how many accounts you have :lol: . One other person will be given the final results and that will be Steve that way he can keep me honest :twisted: . Remember I have another company to run so this might get put on hold for a little bit in the middle of the project. I am willing to post video and pictures as time allows to document this. This will all be posted here in this thread. I might also offer a small button for the winner but no promise. The chips start ariving this week. Anybody wanting to participate must say so before Sunday at midnight 12:00 July 3rd 2010.

I'm lookin for a couple of things.

1. Magnetic stirir with bars and heated 6" to 9" top
2. I would like to start getting some lab glass to work with.

Not looking for these items for free. I just hate flebay and hate too see stuff not used so dust off your shelves. Oh and I'm a cheap skate.

Ideas comment's welcome.

Edit:
Also would be interested in a diffrent scale since mine only reads in grams. 2 decimal places maybe three.
 
I have three heated stirrers arriving tomorrow or early next week. I may be able to help there if they are all in good shape.

I'll PM you when I get them in my hands.

Glassware is easy to come by on Ebay. Look for lots of 4 to 6 beakers, thick walled, and new in the box. You'll need several of each of these sizes 100 mL, 500-600 mL, 1L, 2L, at least one 4L wouldn't hurt if you can find one for cheap. Glass funnels filter papers, and test tubes are handy too, as well as a few wide mouth Erlenmeyer flasks, and also vacuum flasks if you are set up with a good pump.

Steve
 
kssurplus said:
That's kinda what I was thinkin to separate the different grades of purity.
I just about have all the stuff for a cell .
I have some 20kt small connectors but they have a drawback in that they had the mini coax cable cut off at the end of the connector.
I am not sure of the composition of the small amount of coax inside them.
What would be a good way to prepare them, maybe to torch them to burn off the unwanted junk and then recover the gold?
Well eventually we will solve these problems in our head first.
Click to expand...

It's not realy grades of purity it is more of different types of metals and with or with out solder. You have to learn what your metals are and what it takes to process each kind and the drawbacks of each one.

If part of the coax cable is still in the connector you will be dealing with the following possibly. The center conductor should be copper, then there is an insulating material between that and the braided wire use for grounding and to reduce RF interference I think then the plastic outer sheathing. Roasting these first to remove the combustible parts and then that should free up the braided wire to be seperated, this could be copper, stainless steel or just steel. that leaves you with the center copper core and the plated connector to deal with. At that point I would look at running them thru a cell.
 
lazersteve said:
I have three heated stirrers arriving tomorrow or early next week. I may be able to help there if they are all in good shape.

I'll PM you when I get them in my hands.

Glassware is easy to come by on Ebay. Look for lots of 4 to 6 beakers, thick walled, and new in the box. You'll need several of each of these sizes 100 mL, 500-600 mL, 1L, 2L, at least one 4L wouldn't hurt if you can find one for cheap. Glass funnels filter papers, and test tubes are handy too, as well as a few wide mouth Erlenmeyer flasks, and also vacuum flasks if you are set up with a good pump.

Steve
Click to expand...

Yea let me know about the stirrer when they arrive. I need to order some stuff from you this week any way possibly.

I'll probably end up going to flebay just thought I might find what some of the memeber are not using.
 
Barren

You are a gluten for punishment.
I certainly will be interested in watching your progress on all those cpu's for sure.

I love getting sugestions on how to get a project started and done.
At my age Ihave to digest something several times to understand but it's coming with the patience of all here.

Those 2 toys look like a good candidate.
Steve P
 
Hey Steve,

The hot plate is being broken in tonight. I didn't get any stir sticks, I made a couple out of PVC tubing, hard drive magnet and filled the tube with silicone and let it cure. They seem to work fine.

I appreciate that very much.
 
I knew it would be just fine as I spent a few days 'breaking it in' myself before you got it!

I disassembled it, checked the electronics, connections, and did a thorough cleaning on it before I sent it to you.

I'm glad you are happy with it, I know I love the two I have.

Steve
 
Barren Realms 007 said:
Bada Bing 38g.

Looks like crap!
Tastes like crap!
Must be CRAP!

Maybe my standards are too high. 8)



And the wife wanted to play with it when I showed it to her and she got a tight grip on it but I was able to pry it from her hands.
Click to expand...

Results are in on the button 99.51. Thanks Fournines
 

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