Almost a year later

I had my sights set on accomplishing this... and now i'm well on my way, and getting pretty damn good at it too!

Has anyone ever tried to refine Gold?

After a lot of study... and of course making sure i wasn't going to kill myself.... I can consider myself an novice Gold refiner

I've been through the entire process about 6 times... and this is my collection of pure 24k gold



Now this was done a little bit at a time, and then melted together.... but im proud of what i've done thus far

Thats 4.1grams... worth about $250

Yay for me!!

Boy, that is really cool!
What kinds of things do you use to refine that gold? Things like broken gold-filled chains???

a reply to: Akragon

That's great. Are you able to comment how you achieved this. Looks like a fun hobby that gives rewards,

Kind regards,

Bally)

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Boy, that is really cool!
What kinds of things do you use to refine that gold? Things like broken gold-filled chains???

actually i've found that using "gold filled" or plated gold is a waste of time. With gold filled material you will literally get fractions of pure gold from a lot of material... the gold becomes transparent and literally floats down the drain IF you're not careful. Plated gold is even worse...

i use 10k gold minimum... which is %25 gold to %75 base material (silver, copper, brass, zinc, nickel etc)

Of course higher karat is better... but also much more pricy to obtain

originally posted by: bally001
a reply to: Akragon

That's great. Are you able to comment how you achieved this. Looks like a fun hobby that gives rewards,

Kind regards,

Bally)

of course...

from the starting material you need to lower the Karat of the gold to about 5-7 karat.

So starting out, lets say we have a 10k gold ring or necklace. We'll say its 4grams in weight... 10k gold is %25 gold. You need to melt it down and add more base metals to lower the karat of the material. So you add that to the melt... you can use copper, but i prefer to use sterling silver because i can recover that too. Copper is just waste material because it has little to no value.

This is called "inquartation" and for 10k material you would need to add to your 4g starting material .63 base material

4g x .63 = 2.52g of silver...

Once melted together the 6.52g of 5-7k material will be put into dilute Nitric acid...which removes the base metals... mostly it will be silver, but theres almost always some copper in the mix, which comes out as a blue solution.

This will need to be done several times to get all the base metals out... it works much faster when boiled but also produces some very nasty fumes which ""CAN BE FATAL"" IF inhaled. These fumes are produced regardless but in much larger quantity when boiled.

Once the base metal is removed you are left with almost pure gold, but there will be traces base metal left.... At this point the material you will have is a black or dark brown powder. This will be covered in Hydrochloric acid, and small amounts of Nitric acid is added producing "Royal Water"... also known as Aqua Regia.

The material will then be dissolved into solution which will be greenish IF theres a lot of base material left, but will turn more yellowish depending on the purity... IF you refine a large amount the solution will be a beautiful dark cherry red.

Once your material is completely dissolved, Sodium Meta bisulfite is added a little at a time. The sulfur will precipitate the gold out of solution becoming a dark grey, even black cloud which will eventually settle to the bottom.

This is pure gold.... From there the material needs to be washed many times with Hot water and once with some HCL...

after which when dried it will be a bright brown super fine powder.... Which is melted into what you see in the OP

a reply to: Akragon

I applaud you on your efforts but have to ask........for 5 grams of gold, how much money did you have to spend to get it?

originally posted by: Akragon
I had my sights set on accomplishing this... and now i'm well on my way, and getting pretty damn good at it too!

Has anyone ever tried to refine Gold?

After a lot of study... and of course making sure i wasn't going to kill myself.... I can consider myself an novice Gold refiner

I've been through the entire process about 6 times... and this is my collection of pure 24k gold

Now this was done a little bit at a time, and then melted together.... but im proud of what i've done thus far

Thats 4.1grams... worth about $250

Yay for me!!

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: Akragon

I applaud you on your efforts but have to ask........for 5 grams of gold, how much money did you have to spend to get it?

Good question... for the actual Karat gold i used to get that chunk of pure gold i didn't spend a penny.

i happen to have a little stash of jewelry handed down from my family... i would have probably spent well over the amount of gold its worth.

That 4g bead consists of three 10k rings, one 14k ring... and a 10k mini bracelet. And one large gold filled refining...

On the other hand i've also spent quite a bit on plated and gold filled stuff... which as i've said, was a waste of time

Believe me... There was no profit involved in this venture as of yet... Purely for practice

a reply to: Akragon

Interesting!
So, gold filled basically is a thin coating of gold?

Is there a source you can use for the 10K gold....seems like buying new jewelry on Amazon etc would be costly?

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
a reply to: Akragon

Interesting!
So, gold filled basically is a thin coating of gold?

Is there a source you can use for the 10K gold....seems like buying new jewelry on Amazon etc would be costly?

Gold filled is very thin... and plated is way thinner believe it or not

Buying jewelry is always pricy, your best bet is to find a yard sale or estate sale where people don't actually know what they have... you can get lucky at thrift stores. Amazon isn't much use, always higher then market price... you can get lucky on Ebay but most people there are just greedy... asking hundreds and even thousands of dollars for pieces that aren't worth much at all... and i've been ripped off quite a few times with straight false advertising

Finding gold is always risky... you really never know what you have until you know by testing