jewelerdave
Hero Member
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2007
- Messages
- 850
- Reaction score
- 98
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Fort Collins, Colorado
- Detector(s) used
- I just follow my nose!...where the silver and gold goes!
Minelab 5000, Goldmaster, and a few others
XRF spectrometer, Common sense.
- Primary Interest:
- Prospecting
Ok, people keep begging me for pics of our small refining operations, we do it about once a week or as needed.
First is a pic of some scrap gold and jewelry from customer trade ins, etc, also some junk from our filings And Lathing. For this lot we have some bench sweeps, and old jewelry, and a couple old British coins from the late 1800s that were used as jewelry.
Next its tossed into a hot acid bath of Aqua Regiea a mix of Nitric and Hydrochloric acid.
We add the scraps and junk carefully as to not splash it, WE ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING!
Its left to sit overnight and the next day we pour off the acid as it contains gold and copper nickel etc.
we rinse the undissolved pieces that are silver of the acid and filter off all the left over solids, this is silver witch we just bag separately and have refined by larger outfits. We are also able to recover gems, diamonds ect as the acid does not harm good stones. These are re sold or reused.
Next we must neutralize the nitric acid witch has partially been done by heating hte acid but is best done by adding Urea/ Uric acid...and yes its Piss and yes piss does work. but we use urea fertilizer, Then we add sodium Bi Sulfite to precipitate the gold out of solution. It falls to the bottom as a nasty brown mass and is quite unappetizing to look at, This is rinsed several times and filtered, the filtered gold is then heated.
The result is a pool of gold once melted. the gold is allowed to cool for a short time and then tossed into water,
The water has a blue shop towel at the bottom and this allows for the gold to be suspended in a jacket of steam so it wont burn the towel or stick too the bottom of the pan.
Once the gold cools down and is not steaming its safe to pick up and hold.
For this lot it ended up being a nice heavy slug of .999 fine gold that was just over 1.7 ounces.
A value of about $1250 at the time of this wighting.
The gold was then choped up and re alloyed into new rings. The scraps from those rings will be re refined in the same process. And on it goes.
First is a pic of some scrap gold and jewelry from customer trade ins, etc, also some junk from our filings And Lathing. For this lot we have some bench sweeps, and old jewelry, and a couple old British coins from the late 1800s that were used as jewelry.
Next its tossed into a hot acid bath of Aqua Regiea a mix of Nitric and Hydrochloric acid.
We add the scraps and junk carefully as to not splash it, WE ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES AND PROTECTIVE CLOTHING!
Its left to sit overnight and the next day we pour off the acid as it contains gold and copper nickel etc.
we rinse the undissolved pieces that are silver of the acid and filter off all the left over solids, this is silver witch we just bag separately and have refined by larger outfits. We are also able to recover gems, diamonds ect as the acid does not harm good stones. These are re sold or reused.
Next we must neutralize the nitric acid witch has partially been done by heating hte acid but is best done by adding Urea/ Uric acid...and yes its Piss and yes piss does work. but we use urea fertilizer, Then we add sodium Bi Sulfite to precipitate the gold out of solution. It falls to the bottom as a nasty brown mass and is quite unappetizing to look at, This is rinsed several times and filtered, the filtered gold is then heated.
The result is a pool of gold once melted. the gold is allowed to cool for a short time and then tossed into water,
The water has a blue shop towel at the bottom and this allows for the gold to be suspended in a jacket of steam so it wont burn the towel or stick too the bottom of the pan.
Once the gold cools down and is not steaming its safe to pick up and hold.
For this lot it ended up being a nice heavy slug of .999 fine gold that was just over 1.7 ounces.
A value of about $1250 at the time of this wighting.
The gold was then choped up and re alloyed into new rings. The scraps from those rings will be re refined in the same process. And on it goes.
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