Where is My gold going? Need Help on Smelting!

[wingsfan98]

I am a newbie here. I have been prospecting for a couple of months and have been lucky enough to find a nice gold vein area. Testing several areas by myself and others has continually resulted in an 18-24k quality.
I am trying to smelt the gold I recover. I have been doing a 2 oz bottle of the recovered fines at a time. My first attempt was with just Borax. My second attempt was with the recipe from the gpaa (5 parts borax, 40 parts silica sand, 10 parts soda ash and 20 parts sodium nitrate).
Both times resulted in the same thing...

It was nowhere to be found when you poured!

Help! Where is the gold going? What am I doing wrong? I am using Oxy-Acetelyne. Do I fire into the crucible or just heat the outside? Is my gold burning up? Where is it going? Is it being trapped inside the glass? I have been heating for 15-20 minutes and everything is turning bright white. Where ever it went, can it be recovered?

HELP!

Any advice would more than be greatly appreciated.

 

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[chlsbrns]

I am a newbie here. I have been prospecting for a couple of months and have been lucky enough to find a nice gold vein area. Testing several areas by myself and others has continually resulted in an 18-24k quality.
I am trying to smelt the gold I recover. I have been doing a 2 oz bottle of the recovered fines at a time. My first attempt was with just Borax. My second attempt was with the recipe from the gpaa (5 parts borax, 40 parts silica sand, 10 parts soda ash and 20 parts sodium nitrate).
Both times resulted in the same thing...

It was nowhere to be found when you poured!

Help! Where is the gold going? What am I doing wrong? I am using Oxy-Acetelyne. Do I fire into the crucible or just heat the outside? Is my gold burning up? Where is it going? Is it being trapped inside the glass? I have been heating for 15-20 minutes and everything is turning bright white. Where ever it went, can it be recovered?

HELP!

Any advice would more than be greatly appreciated.

Are you sure it's gold?

What happened when you smelted with only borax? It disappeared?

Is it real thick when you pour?

Crush the glass & pan it to see what's there.

Try this recipe...

2 parts borax
1 part soda ash
1 part silica sand
1 part sodium nitrate (add to the above when ready to smelt! Do not store with it added to the above. You can also leave this out completely)
1/2 part lime (Quick lime from a hardware store. Type S unslaked)

Parts are by weight not by volume!

For 2 oz of gold you would use:

2 oz gold + 4 oz borax + 2 oz soda ash + 2 oz silica sand + 2 oz sodium nitrate + 1 oz lime.

Fire into the crucible

Why are you smelting it anyway? Just melt it!

 

[vpnavy]

I noticed this was your very first post - so, welcome aboard from the great state of Pennsylvania (USA).

You didn't mention your state (or country) - but you might consider jumping over to Sub-Forums: Select Your Area.... and selecting your state for information (i.e., clubs, hunts, finds, legends, maps, etc.) directly related to your state (or country).

 

[Alex Burke]

Hi, just get something like this http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=130503125928&cmd=VIDESC hopefully link works and use mapp gas to melt it. Watch videos on YouTube on how to do it safely. You could use propane but it takes lot longer. Good luck.

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

is your heat source in direct contact with the metal?

can't believe you got the metals so hot they became gas?

 

[gold tramp]

smelting

Action mining co. you can get flux for your smelt.

to achieve your best melt always 30 minutes to melt then 15 to 30 extra to get a good clean bead.
never try to rush, your final result is what you sell it needs to be clean.

propane is going to be better for smelting, and you need to build a smelter, 2oz lot kinda big for torch method, as you can see from my pics, rocks are fine for contstucting a smelter, you just need to hold heat.
the larger the lot your smelting the longer you need to keep it hot, I always try to keep them in the 1/2 oz range that whould take 1 hour to smelt.

your bead should be in the glass, just crush your glass it should fall out?
if you got gold it will be there.

hope this helps.......


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[Jimmydolittle]

Here is a clip from youtube there are 2 parts to the video:

 

[wingsfan98]

Positive it's gold. Several different areas tested and all came back at 18-24k. Also, had two others (one prospector and one gold dealer) test it and same results. Unfortunately, prospector is no longer able to do it as he is on full time, heavy oxygen so I can't have him even walk me through it. What we saw in crucible was thick. Same results with borax alone. Could see it but when we poured it disappeared. Heated for thirty minutes with oxy-acetelyne. flamed into crucible. Hoping to build a small blast furnace type kiln this weekend but afraid to lose anymore before finding out what I am doing wrong.
I have crushed the fused silica crucible and the glass and want to refire that to see if I can find it...or am I better to just pan it to see?

 

[Alex Burke]

If you break the glass chunks it's not inside? My main worry is your torch is blowing the dust out of crucible by having to much pressure.

 

[chlsbrns]

Positive it's gold. Several different areas tested and all came back at 18-24k. Also, had two others (one prospector and one gold dealer) test it and same results. Unfortunately, prospector is no longer able to do it as he is on full time, heavy oxygen so I can't have him even walk me through it. What we saw in crucible was thick. Same results with borax alone. Could see it but when we poured it disappeared. Heated for thirty minutes with oxy-acetelyne. flamed into crucible. Hoping to build a small blast furnace type kiln this weekend but afraid to lose anymore before finding out what I am doing wrong.
I have crushed the fused silica crucible and the glass and want to refire that to see if I can find it...or am I better to just pan it to see?

Pan the crushed glass to get back the gold then melt it without any flux. You could cover the gold with a layer of borax to stop the torch from blowing the gold out of the crucible.

You crushed the crucible? You didn't pour from the crucible into a mold? Did you stir while firing?

 

[golden ray]

I could write a 1000 page book on all the different methods/problems with
melting gold. But once you get the hang of it, you'll see there is no problem
you can't solve.
Your best bet ( my opion ) at this stage of your quest, would be to check out
all the homemade vidios on 'You Tube'. Some very good info. there.