Flux Recipe

[clydeman]

I need the ratio weight or percent for the following flux:
Borax
Sodium Nitrate
Sand

I am not interested in the lead or mercury version as I can get those online somewhere. The above recipe is not so easy to find.

BTW, hello everyone, my first post

 

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[strickman]

I think this is the one you are looking for copied from ggpa website The Poormans Method of SMELTING GOLD

A simple answer; The process or recovery of micro Gold from Concentrates

What do I need to do to Smelt my concentrates

Acetylene torch.
Couple of small crucibles #2,3 or 4, preferably bentonyte clay / graphite will last longer.
Your house mixed smelting flux.
tongs,saftey equipment.

Okay, what do I do
*SPECIAL NOTE* ***Wash and soak your clean blacksands with acidic acid [cider vinegar] for a day or so first.
1, Good clean blacksand concentrates.Preferably dry and ground to #70 - mesh in size.
2, Smelting Flux for precious metal, it's easy to make up a House flux for your needs.
You may have to make minor flux receipe adjustments depending on the concentrates you are planning to smelt.
Here is how. [adjust amount of total flux to your needs] use a tablespoon for measuring flux mix instead of pounds for each part.
1, anhydrous Borax, 5 parts. [regular Borax from the supermarket will do the same]
2, #70 silica sand, 40 parts. [get it at any home depot]
3, soda ash, 10 parts.
4, sodium nitrate, 20 parts [oxidizer].
5, Now mix all of this together and store for when needed in a closed container,"keep it dry".
6, When ready to smelt your cons, add 1 to 2 parts of Flux to each part of Concentrates. Mix well and put the heat to it.
7, Put flux/cons mix into crucible and dampen with rubbing alcohol.
8, Fire up with a torch.
9, Once upto good hot temp take it upto 2000*F and hold until molten bright yellow white.
10, Prepare pour [ I use cast iron] mold by drying it out and heating it up [few hundred degrees].
Special Point, if the pour is to thick add some more borax to thin it out.
11, Get on all of your saftey gear, face mask,long sleeve gloves, apron also have a fire extingusher.
12, Once ready to pour, put grabbing end of tongs into torch flame for a few seconds to heat them up, [avoid themal shock to crucible].
13, Now grab crucible and begin to pour into mold in one continuous pour.Make sure you have enough mold for "ALL" of the smelted material.
14, Once poured, set cucible on warm surface, not on cold [thermal shock].
15, Let mold cool, let crucible cool and be sure you turned off the torch.
16, When cooled gold will be in the bottom, borax glass on top, pop it out and flip it over. Theres your Gold. Tap gently and it'll come apart.


Okay, what NOT to do

1,Work over concrete, it explodes when hit with hot metal.
2,Never put hot on cold, thermal shock causes real problems.
3,Stay away from water also clear over head area from falling foreign material [boom].
4,Work area all cluttered up with obstacles. You drop it and its all over, burn to the bone even death.
5,Let spectators into your immediate working area.

Why is Smelting so important

Its a known fact that there can be 4 - 10 times more Gold in your concentrates than the visible Gold that you can see and recover. There are several ways to recover this material including leaching, smelting and others. But one of the most practicle and proven methods is to smelt the concentrates. Remember one thing, when smelting, you are now a chemist as well as a Gold Prospector. And careful attention must be paid to what you are doing at all times. A mistake can mean serious consequences too and include even death.
Now to finish up with the process.

1, Once cooled down [several hours] flip mold and pop out the cooled pour.
2, You will see a layer of precious metal on top and a layer of Borax/silica glass below melted together.
3, using a small hammer or mallet, strike the edge of the metal and it'll separate from the glass.
4, That is your Gold with possible silver and platinum mixed in.
5, All of the other metals will have either burned off or will be suspended in the Borax/Silica glass layer.

In our next tutorial you'll learn how to refine the metals that you smelted into fine Gold .999 in quality.
***Footnote: Washing and soaking in acidic acid breaks down the sulfites and the considerable amounts of iron [Fe] that are in the concentrates. Rinse with water when done soaking "CAREFULLY" so not to wash out micro gold.
GGPA Main Page

 

[clydeman]

Thanks, that is what I was looking for.

 

[strickman]

glad to have helped .

 

[ace4166]

This is the same recipe that i have. Never had the chance to try it yet so please keep us informed how it works out.

 

[Warrior_Gold]

Million dollar question, what would be better, I have an ore Concentrate with Copper, Silver and gold, I would like to recover those three metals, and others if possible what would be the best method, Smelting or leaching, and or cost affective. or combine both if so what order?

If I use leaching, I was going to use Nitric acid for the Copper and silver, and Aqua Regia for the gold. Then use Electrolysis for the cooper and smelt the sliver back into metal. then the gold, but I am not sure if this would be the most cost affective method, costing more then what I get out of the ore.
What do you suggest. the ore is already pulverised to a very fine powder.

 

[Jimmydolittle]

I would refer you to the gold refining forum for that information: GOLD REFINING FORUM - GOLD REFINERS HELPING ONE ANOTHER It will all be covered there.

 

[russau]

for me,im haveing trouble understanding why someone would want to "smelt" their gold themselves. because it would still need tobe done if you sold it to a refiner/etc. so they could stamp it.unless they just want todo it themselves for the experience of it. for me, id be happy with just "melting" the fines into a dore.im not knocking anyone for doing/trying this, but for me this is a uneeded cost/proccess.

 

[LP13]

Try the one I use, seems to work well enough:
Nitrate 20%
Borax 65%
Sand 10% (or less if you already have a lot of silicates in the material you are smelting, like black sands with some tan sand and other silicates still in it)
Yup only adds to 95%
Cuz I add 5% Soda Ash. Most flux recipes add a LITTLE soda ash. I added a small amount of soda ash the first time I was experimenting with fluxes and it worked nicely. More is better right?? So I added more - quite a bit more - big mistake. Was told by a geologist friend when I showed him the mess that I had made that I had re-invented granite

 

[LP13]

for me,im haveing trouble understanding why someone would want to "smelt" their gold themselves. because it would still need tobe done if you sold it to a refiner/etc. so they could stamp it.unless they just want todo it themselves for the experience of it. for me, id be happy with just "melting" the fines into a dore.im not knocking anyone for doing/trying this, but for me this is a uneeded cost/proccess.

I try lots of things. Chemical leaches and extraction and smelting among them. Always playing with something. Absolutely no way I will ever make money with what I do, but then for me, it's not about the money. It's about the learning. I am fascinated with all this and I am sure that there are plenty of others like me that just want to understand and experiment for the sake of knowledge. I was great at tearing clocks apart when I was a kid! Which reminds me that I need to get back to that project of inventing a new clock that has an extra hand and 12 extra hours in a day so I have the extra time to do the things I want that I seem never to have any more

 

[blacksand]

hi I like this one.Simple.Wallace J had one similar to this except I cant determine the quantities used.Any hints or additional suggestions to this recipe?

Thanks

 

[Marmentman]

Is it really worth it to smelt your gold or leave it powder or melt it all in to one button?

 

[KevinInColorado]

Is it really worth it to smelt your gold or leave it powder or melt it all in to one button?

No it's not worth it. You get more for the gold by selling it in its original form on eBay. I smelted some so I could give it to a goldsmith to get a ring made. That was cool!

 

[LP13]

A lot of people believe smelting gives them pure gold. You can end up with pure gold, but it will take some steps to do it, smelting a few times, not just once. Problem is that smelted gold still contains silver, palladium, iron, lead, platinum, even possibly some germanium, etc. A small amount in most cases but it's enough not to be pure. Also, regardless what people think, smelted gold using borax does not give you back all your gold. To find out if what I say is true, try this:

First smelt your gold as you would normally and collect your gold. Now take all the glass you have and melt it again, adding a few teaspoons of baking soda to it. Make sure it's good and melted, swish it around a few times to make sure it mixes good and then pour it out. After cooling crush it up fairly fine like 20 minus or so. Won't hurt to have some bigger pieces though so don't kill yourself crushing it up. Now put it in a container, like a five gallon bucket, and add water. A couple gallons and add some hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid.) This will dissolve the borax and most of the things like lead, iron, copper, etc., still in it. When it is all dissolved you will find some solid stuff in the bottom. Look at it under a microscope and you will see that it's gold, platinum, palladium, etc.

So to get pure gold, you take your button that you fired and dissolve it in aqua regia. Then precipitate out the gold. I won't go into the process here as that's not important. But to get pure gold requires refining after smelting, and even with the aqua regia step, there is some loss of gold in the solution. So now you have lost gold twice from the original amount. This can add up.

Unless you have some reason for absolutely pure gold, it's best to leave it in the natural state, as it's been said here, natural specimens are worth more than a block of pure gold by weight. Sometimes they can fetch much more than their actual gold value if they have a uniqueness to them that might make them a nice piece to put in jewelry. Jewelers are always looking for nice specimens to buy.

So there you have my 2cents on the subject for what it's worth!

 

[Marmentman]

Is that true even for flour gold, haven't found any nuggets yet and unless I go a long way from here probably will not find many nuggets, but as the flour adds up don't know the best thing to do with it except just hold on to it

 

[KevinInColorado]

Is that true even for flour gold, haven't found any nuggets yet and unless I go a long way from here probably will not find many nuggets, but as the flour adds up don't know the best thing to do with it except just hold on to it

Yes it's true for flour gold too. Go look on eBay to see how it sells. $$!

 

[Marmentman]

Well thanks a lot

 

[Jason in Enid]

Yes it's true for flour gold too. Go look on eBay to see how it sells. $$!

Flour gold is a royal pain in the butt to recover! I will easily spend 10 times the the time to recover all my flour gold from this last dredging trip than it took to dredge it up! A cheap, improvised backyard furnace will be my method to recover the gold next time. I will also be using it to test-melt my super cons to see how much ultra-fine gold I missed.

I'm not interested in selling my gold, and if I ever do it will be to ARA.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Flour gold is a royal pain in the butt to recover! I will easily spend 10 times the the time to recover all my flour gold from this last dredging trip than it took to dredge it up! A cheap, improvised backyard furnace will be my method to recover the gold next time. I will also be using it to test-melt my super cons to see how much ultra-fine gold I missed.

I'm not interested in selling my gold, and if I ever do it will be to ARA.

Sorry to hear you are struggling with fine gold separation from black sand. It's definitely an art! Have you tried classifying your cons with 12/30/50 mesh screens? How about using a magnet? Jet dry?
...with these tools you can really zip thru the cons!

 

[Seden]

Should get the book "How to smelt your GOLD & Silver" by Hank Chapman,jr. He has the original Mint flux plus his own improved flux.