Where to start

[crhodes9898]

Good day,

I have been looking into doing inquarting with copper. I have done some research and I understand the premise of how to perform the procedure. What I am unsure of are a few things. What are the best brands of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid to use? Where can you get them? Also, how can you figure how much copper to use based on the weight of your scrap gold? Is there a formula for this? Next, do you need a fume hood for this or is it okay to perform outdoors?

I appreciate any comments and recommendations.

 

[butcher]

Have you done any homework in the safety section?

HCl you can find as a concrete cleaner or for swimming pools...
68% nitric acid may be harder to get, try your local mining supplier, or chemical distribution warehouses, I distill my own.

Why in-quarter the gold with copper? It uses more nitric than silver will.
Calculate the gold content and base metal content, say for 10 grams of 14K, we would have 14/24 gold or 0.5833333 % gold, so 10grams (14K)x.583= 5.83 grams of gold (and 4.17grams of base metal involved).


Now you know how much silver or copper you need to get 25% gold and 75% silver or base metals.
We have 5.3 grams of gold (in the 10g 14K), and we want the gold content to be 1/4 total metals involved, so we want a total of 17,49 grams of silver or base metals, we already have 4.17 grams involved so we can add 13.32 grams of silver or base metals to in-quarter the gold.

 

[crhodes9898]

Thanks for the response.

I am using copper because I have more copper available to me than silver. I also don’t want to deal with silver chloride.

Then is it okay to do the treatment outdoors? Or should I invest in a fumehood? I won’t be doing this on a large scale at first. I want to see if I can even do it without screwing it up.

Also, if I have a low karat piece of jewelry, should I still inquart it first or could I just begin the acid treatments?

Thank you

 

[butcher]

First, gain a good understanding of the dangers involved, and a good understanding of the procedure and what to expect, what problems you will possibly encounter, understand the dangers and how to protect yourself and others...

Understand how to deal with the waste safely.
Hoke's book and the safety section and reading about the subject on the forum should get you up to speed.

The Karat gold will most like already have silver so you may be dealing with silver anyway.
If the gold content is more than 1/4 of the total metal content, I would in-quarter, make shot, and part the gold in nitric acid.

in-quartering and Parting the gold with nitric acid will put most of the silver into silver nitrate, you would not have to deal with much silver chloride.

You can work outside, but the dangers are still all around you.

Study, Take a breath and relax, with a little homework you can gain an education you will not get from watching videos or asking a bunch of questions when the chemical reactions do not go as you expect...

Before I jump out of an airplane, I will spend some time learning how to use a parachute, so maybe I could land safely and where I wish to land.