Pictures of Refining gold/Silver

[jewelerdave]

For those who enjoy seeing gold refining, I have posted some pics in the past...however now they are buried. We do this a couple times a week recycling gold into new jewelry etc.

First pic is the acid eating away the gold

second pic is starting to drop the gold from solution The Brown is the gold.

3rd pic is is a steaming heaping pile of $ hit the jack pot baby! thats gold despite the looks.

4th pic is the gold melted into a button while red hot.

5th pic is the the gold button after dropping it in water.

6th pic is the gold poured into a mold.

7th pic is the bar of gold!

If you want to learn more about what I just did, please learn from others at www.goldrefiningforum.com/

[jewelerdave]

Silver, updating


1st pic, Nitric eating away at gold alloyed with silver.

2nd pic Gold left over, Processed with Aqua regia next, Silver solution is then filtered and added to more nitric with dissolved silver and copper.

3rd pic. A huge copper rod in the solution, the silver plates out onto the copper and is scraped off and falls off too the bottom. it is then rinsed and filtered
For this operation we dont need the silver to be pure as its for recovery to be used for Inquartation. So we let some copper slide.

4th pic. Silver that has been filtered.

5th pic, half melted, you can see the silver color now!

6th pic, all melted!

7th pic, A nice mostly pure lump of silver. Again, not pure because we dont need pure silver, When it adds up to enough we sell it to a larger refiner as we order specialty blends of sterling, this is simply for recovery and some in house recycling. When fifty to a hundred ounces add up, we sell it.

8th pic, Some of the rings we make.

[Groucho]

Thanks for the post.

[whitesid]

nice pics. what was the weight on the silver and gold?

[seger98]

Thanks for the lesson! Was interesting

[cavers5]

Wow! I want to do that! Do you have an actual lab or just some basic chemistry equipment?

Cavers5

[Yarrum]

Great pictures Dave. Just wondering on average how much pure gold in weight do you get from 1 ounce worth of 9ct gold.

[jewelerdave]

I dont get much 9ct in the states as its not a legal alloy in the US. But it should be about 35% gold on average as almost all gold is under karat. I would say that 3 troy ounces should yield about 1 troy ounce or a bit more of fine gold. Or one troy ounce of 9ct should yield about 1/3 ounce fine gold or a bit more.

We have a full jewelry production shop with everything from CAD/CAM milling, laser welding, solid and liquid state diffusion bonding and welding. Refining, casting etc. Its pretty much a jewelers dream shop. I tell my customers the only things that limit what we can do are
1. The laws of physics.
2. Customers Budget.

Sometimes the customer has to provide for us. Like when a custom brought us a piece of mars meteorite to be inlayed into a pendant. Along with opal, and a monster 11 carat diamond.
And we also do plain bands.
So even if we have to do make something that is not from this world. yeah, we can do it.

[Yarrum]

Beautiful rings mate. And thanks for your help. One more question if you've got time....
I'd like to refine myself but
A - I'm too scared of the chemicals
B - I don't think I could access the chemicals
C - For what I could buy the scrap for I don't think the outlay would make it viable
So my question is (and you don't have to respond) What do you charge to refine gold. Do you charge by the ounce of scrap or a percentage of the refined product.

Cheers Mate
Murray

[jewelerdave]

I refine for others on a case by case basis.
For just basic refining I charge $50 US for just gold from junk jewelry, or from gold dust. If you are looking to sell the gold I will pay 96% and waive the refining fee,
If you want the gold back, its the cost of $50 in gold plus shipping back too you, But I recommend going with insured mail.
Most people send me gold in on trade for Rings witch I take in for credit. Or I end up making them a ring of 24k gold from there own gold or recycle family heirloom gold into new wedding bands etc. Or make a ring out of gold nuggets they found etc. everyone is different, some want gold back others want cash or jewelry, here in the next few days I will be offering 1/10th ounce fine gold coins. They will be fun and give more options for people who have junk gold but want it in a form that is a bit more recognizable and accepted and marked with correct assay.

[davest]

those are some great pictures and very good explanations of what you do and how you do it.

[tsnf]

Thanks for the education jewelerdave! I have learned a lot of good information, given freely, from you and the other members of the TNet family.

The jewelry is beautiful,

HH and best wishes,

TSNF

[cavers5]

Where did you learn to do all this?

Can I use aqua regia on computer parts?

Cavers5

[catdriver]

I refine for others on a case by case basis.
For just basic refining I charge $50 US for just gold from junk jewelry, or from gold dust. If you are looking to sell the gold I will pay 96% and waive the refining fee,
If you want the gold back, its the cost of $50 in gold plus shipping back too you, But I recommend going with insured mail.
Most people send me gold in on trade for Rings witch I take in for credit. Or I end up making them a ring of 24k gold from there own gold or recycle family heirloom gold into new wedding bands etc. Or make a ring out of gold nuggets they found etc. everyone is different, some want gold back others want cash or jewelry, here in the next few days I will be offering 1/10th ounce fine gold coins. They will be fun and give more options for people who have junk gold but want it in a form that is a bit more recognizable and accepted and marked with correct assay.

Dave, ck my post out titled 50 lbs of silver solder an let me know what ya think or if interested. I could send ya sample if need be.


Ron B.

[whitesid]

i got a question for you. once you drop the gold out of the solution, what do you do with it? i know that low karat gold has silver and other metals in it. do you also recover the silver from it?

[jewelerdave]

two ways to do it, high karat gold, disolve the gold and silver is left behind, or low karat junk, add silver and remove it via nitric, leaving the gold behind.
Its the difference between AR and Inquartation. After inquarting I use AR and that gets it extra pure.
Whats left in the bottom is simply collected and melted or needs a step or two before you can just melt it, Just depends what you are doing. There are many ways to refine metals. Since everything I do is just for either fine gold or for jewelry, I generaly just use the simple methods, Gold is the main thing I go for, silver as a byproduct and kind of annoying to deal with on the scale I do silver on. When I have enough silver to process I sometimes just take a day and do 30 to 50 ounces, otherwise even at $15-20 per ounce, its just not worth it for the scale I do it on. Gold is always worth it though.