Where is my gold ?

[Topher_osAUrus]

Its truly hard to say for sure, since the solutions are gone.
Without knowing what the solutions looked like, seeing the sediment remaining after the dissolve, or seeing a stannous test or 3. We are poking around in the dark. The blind leading the blind, sort of deal.

But, we CAN, however, still work with what we still have.
That being, the borax.
OP needs to follow your advice Jon, break up the borax. Dissolve as much as he can in hot water(weak sulfuric is better). And go from there.
If lucky, we will see some prills on the bottom of the beaker.

If we are unlucky, then maybe it is time to talk further about misstamped articles of jewelry. :evil:

 

[g_axelsson]

Too much SMB shouldn't reduce other base metals. SMB can reduce Copper(II) chloride into coppe(I) chloride and precipitate white crystals, but those easily dissolve in HCl so that would not carry on to the melting.

What do we have left to investigate?
- Solids left over from aqua regia digestion? Probably not but we don't know that yet.
- Liquids? No, it's been discarded already so we can't investigate that.
- Powder after precipitating with SMB? Only a picture of the original powder in a wet filter.
- Melted product? Yes, it's all embedded or dissolved in borax. We have already suggested how to test it for any gold.

Sure, we will help this guy out as good as we can, but there are a couple of things to consider and with that sludge in the filter I don't know what else to suggest than the alloys wasn't what it claimed to be from markings.

If the gold has been discarded then there isn't a lot we can do.

So...
- Either there were almost no gold in the beginning but then there should have been at least some gold in the mud.
- Or an error along the way put the gold in the filter or in the liquid.

If there is a small amounts of gold in the borax then it is highly probable that there is all there was and the goods were plated or filled (rolled for you Brits).
If there are no gold in the borax then it was probably discarded by an error in the process.

Göran

 

[anachronism]

If there are no gold in the borax then it was probably discarded by an error in the process.

Göran

And THAT my friend is the approach I am advocating. To view this as a con job before removing the likely factors is merely the easy option. Let's be analytical about it before pointing fingers.

 

[Topher_osAUrus]

Too much SMB shouldn't reduce other base metals. SMB can reduce Copper(II) chloride into coppe(I) chloride and precipitate white crystals, but those easily dissolve in HCl so that would not carry on to the melting.
....
Göran

If the strong aqua regia was not diluted before precipitation, the smb can create silver-sulfur complex (I cannot recall if its sulfide, sulfite, or sulfate -my books are at my new house, I am at my old one)

Edit to add

If that was the case, the slag could become pretty black from that

 

[anachronism]

Too much SMB shouldn't reduce other base metals. SMB can reduce Copper(II) chloride into coppe(I) chloride and precipitate white crystals, but those easily dissolve in HCl so that would not carry on to the melting.
....
Göran

If the strong aqua regia was not diluted before precipitation, the smb can create silver-sulfur complex (I cannot recall if its sulfide, sulfite, or sulfate -my books are at my new house, I am at my old one)

Edit to add

If that was the case, the slag could become pretty black from that

No that's not gonna be the case Topher. It's way over complicating it. Ive dropping more solutions than I can count without diluting, and never once come across that. Admittedly it might be because I'm good at cleaning but hey.

 

[Topher_osAUrus]

Admittedly it might be because I'm good at cleaning but hey.

That is the key point I was trying to get across.
Without washing the precipitate properly, all that junk in the mix with the gold powder is going to do nothing but cause more problems.

He said there was a little "dirt" on the bottom after dissolve, so we could probably assume that is a little bit of the silver chloride. But, his strongly mixed AR most certainly held some in solution.
And. He didnt mention if he added the sulfamic and smb in crystal form or aqueous. If the sulfamic was dissolved in water, that would have helped eliminate the silver chloride in solution.

 

[anachronism]

The Silver Chloride really isn't the issue. Actually I mentioned the cleaning way back in the thread though as a reason for the colour of the Borax. I can't see how these things would affect the result in terms of gold unless the gold hasn't been dissolved and precipitated in the first place.

 

[Topher_osAUrus]

The Silver Chloride really isn't the issue. Actually I mentioned the cleaning way back in the thread though as a reason for the colour of the Borax. I can't see how these things would affect the result in terms of gold unless the gold hasn't been dissolved and precipitated in the first place.

Looks like we are about out of variables then.

So, unless he finds some prills in the borax, its nothing but bad news all around Im afraid.

 

[Lino1406]

Look at the positive side: after all it is not so much for learning fee (I paid more, much more)